> Shuffle [1..20], then take 5?
> Yes, so simple, I'm embarrassed I didn't think of it.

That works well for small numbers, but I'm guessing it will evaluate the entire list so it should not be used for large inputs. If you have a large interval and use a relatively small part of it, the following function should be significantly faster (it builds a random permutation lazily):  

import System.Random
randomOrder :: (Ord a, Num a, Random a, RandomGen g) => (a,a) -> g -> [a]
randomOrder (low,high) g 
 | low > high  = []
 | otherwise   = let
   (a,g') = randomR (low,high) g
   (gl,gr) = split g'
   in a : mergeRandom (a-1-low,randomOrder (low,a-1) gl) 
                      (high-a-1, randomOrder (a+1,high) gr) g'
  where
    mergeRandom (_,[]) (_,xs) _       = xs
    mergeRandom (_,xs) (_,[]) _       = xs
    mergeRandom (lx,x:xs) (ly,y:ys) g = let
      (pick,g') = randomR (1,lx + ly) g
      in if pick <= lx 
        then x : mergeRandom (lx-1,xs) (ly,y:ys) g'
        else y : mergeRandom (lx,x:xs) (ly-1,ys) g'



On 14 June 2011 04:31, michael rice <nowgate@yahoo.com> wrote:
Thanks, all.

It seemed like something like this should exist in a prob/stat package, and if so, didn't want to reinvent the wheel.

Shuffle [1..20], then take 5?

Yes, so simple, I'm embarrassed I didn't think of it.

Michael



--- On Mon, 6/13/11, Felipe Almeida Lessa <felipe.lessa@gmail.com> wrote:

From: Felipe Almeida Lessa <felipe.lessa@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Haskell-cafe] Acquiring a random set of a specific size (w/o dups) from a range of Ints
To: "michael rice" <nowgate@yahoo.com>
Cc: haskell-cafe@haskell.org
Date: Monday, June 13, 2011, 9:38 PM


On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 8:56 PM, michael rice <nowgate@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Is there an (existing) way to select 5 Ints randomly (no duplicates) from a population, say 1-20 (inclusive)?

Yes, already implemented in the monte-carlo package as sampleSubset [1],

  sampleSubset :: MonadMC m => [a] -> Int -> m [a]

Complete example code for your example:

  evalMC (sampleSubset [1..20] 5) (mt19937 0)

Cheers!

[1] http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/monte-carlo/0.4.1/doc/html/Control-Monad-MC-Class.html#v:sampleSubset

--
Felipe.

_______________________________________________
Haskell-Cafe mailing list
Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org
http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe