On 2026-10-21, Greg Wooledge <[email protected]> wrote: > On Wed, Oct 21, 2026 at 20:48:28 +0200, Nicolas George wrote: >> By the way, it seems what you want is not just distinct elements but all >> the elements too: a permutation. For that, there is a much more >> efficient algorithm: swap the first element randomly with any of the >> elements, then the second with any of the elements except the first, >> etc. > > I didn't get that impression from his code, but if he really does want > his playlist to be the same size, or nearly the same size, as his > full library of selections, then shuffling the array is the way to go > for sure. > > You don't want to be in a situation where you're generating random > numbers waiting for that last song out of 10,000 songs to be chosen. >
If I select random on a finite song playlist, I wouldn't want the same song playing twice; this would require an algorithm that would deselect songs that have already been chosen. Maybe your code accounted for that (or not).
