Create, sort, and print a list of 100 random ints in the fewest chars of code

Question

What is the least amount of code you can write to create, sort (ascending), and print a list of 100 random positive integers? By least amount of code I mean characters contained in the entire source file, so get to minifying.

I'm interested in seeing the answers using any and all programming languages. Let's try to keep one answer per language, edit the previous to correct or simplify. If you can't edit, comment?

Answer 1

10 characters in J:

/:~100?9e9

explanation:

/:~ sorts an array (technically, applies a lists sorted permutation vector to itself)

x ? limit returns x random numbers less than limit

9e9 (9000000000) is a reasonable upper limit expressible in 3 characters. !9 (9 factorial) is smaller, but requires one less character.

Answer 2

xkcd style in PHP:

for($i=0;$i<100;$i++) echo "4\n";

Answer 3

Linux, command line:

% od -dAn -N40 /dev/random | tr ' ' '\n' | sort -nu
4959
6754
8133
10985
11121
14413
17335
20754
21317
30008
30381
33494
34935
41210
41417
43054
48254
51279
54055
55306

Answer 4

My entry:

echo enter a bunch of ints, hit control-D when done
cat - | sort -n

or, per Adam in the comments:

echo enter a bunch of ints, hit control-D when done
sort -n

Answer 5

C#

using System;
using System.Linq;
class A {
    static void Main() {
        var r=new Random();
        new A[100].Select(i=>r.Next()).OrderBy(i=>i).ToList().ForEach(Console.WriteLine);
    }
}

EDIT: made complete program. assumes newlines and spaces could be removed, but left in for clarity :)

EDIT: made even shorter.... I dare someone to improve this one... I've tried for an hour.

EDIT: I think that's a bit shorter.

EDIT: I think that's even more shorter. Ugh, make me stop.

EDIT: One more line, one less character. Debatable...

---

Explanation

A[100] - an array of any old thing - in this case A's (it's a nice short name). The contents are completely ignored, it's the size of the array that counts.

.Select(i=>r.Next()) - generates an enumerable of 100 values of r.Next().

.OrderBy(i=>i) - sorts the previous in order.

.ToList() - convert the sorted enumerable of int to a List, so we can use ForEach.

ForEach(Console.WriteLine) - call Console.WriteLine 100 times, passing in each integer value in the list.

Answer 6

Mathematica, 28 chars

Sort@RandomInteger[2^32, 100]

That gives 100 (sorted) random integers in {0,...,2^32}.

Answer 7

APL

13 chars:

a[⍋a←100?9e8]

Answer 8

Common Lisp, int between 0 and 10000 (there is no upper bound for that, but you have to choose one).

(sort (loop repeat 100 collect (random 10000)) #'<)

Answer 9

Haskell:

import Random
import List
main=newStdGen>>=print.sort.(take 100).randomRs(0,2^32)

Answer 10

An attempt in ruby:

p [].tap{|a|100.times{a<<rand(9e9)}}.sort

(With eight fewer characters, but requiring the tap kestrel of Ruby 1.9)

-for ruby 1.8:

p (0..?d).map{rand 1<<32}.sort

30 characters. (could trim by 2 by changing back to 9e9, but comment in question says range should be MaxInt32.

Answer 11

F#

let r = new System.Random();;

[ for i in 0..100 -> r.Next()] |> List.sort (fun x y -> x-y);;

Answer 12

In BASH:

for i in `seq 100`; do echo $RANDOM; done | sort -n

Answer 13

Powershell :

35 chars (with PowerShell Community Extensions, which replaces Get-Random):

0..99|%{[int]((random)*10000)}|sort

20 characters (plain PowerShell v2):

0..99|%{random}|sort

Answer 14

Python to print 100 random, sorted integers

import random,sys
print sorted(random.randint(1,sys.maxint)for x in range(100))

@Adam already beat me to it, but I thought using randint() and sys.maxint was sufficiently different to post anyway.

Answer 15

APL (interactive):

If you want the numbers 0-99 (or 1-100, depending on whether you have the index origin in your workspace set to 0 or 1) to be unique, it takes 8 characters, like so:

↑100?100

If you don't care about uniqueness, do this (9 characters):

↑?100ρ100

Want larger numbers? Just substitute your upper limit, N, for the second 100 on each line, and your random numbers will be in the range 0 - N-1 (or 1-N if your index origin is set to 1).

If you want to guarantee that your numbers range from 0-99 (or 0 - N-1 if you're going for a larger upper limit) regardless of the index origin setting, just enclose either of the above lines in parentheses and add

-⎕IO

to the end (where ⎕ is APL's quad character). That's an additional 6 characters.

Answer 16

Javascript: (via JSDB or Mozilla's Rhino used in shell mode)

x=[];for(i=0;i<100;i++){x.push((Math.random()+"").slice(-8));};x.sort();

Here's a full test run:

c:\>java org.mozilla.javascript.tools.shell.Main
Rhino 1.7 release 1 2008 03 06
js> x=[];for(i=0;i<100;i++){x.push((Math.random()+"").slice(-8));};x.sort();
01499626,02403545,02800791,03320788,05748566,07789074,08998522,09040705,09115996,09379424,10940262,11743066,13806434,14113139,14336231,14382956,15581655,16573104,20043435,21234726,21473566,22078813,22378284,22884394,24241003,25108788,25257883,26286262,28212011,29596596,32566749,33329346,33655759,34344559,34666071,35159796,35310143,37233867,37490513,37685305,37845078,38525696,38589046,40538689,41813718,43116428,43658007,43790468,43791145,43809742,44984312,45115129,47283875,47415222,47434661,54777726,55394134,55798732,55969764,56654976,58329996,59079425,59841404,60161896,60185483,60747905,63075065,69348186,69376617,69680882,70145733,70347987,72551703,73122949,73507129,73609605,73979604,75183751,82218859,83285119,85332552,85570024,85968046,86236137,86700519,86974075,87232105,87839338,88577428,90559652,90587374,90916279,90934951,94311632,94422663,94788023,96394742,97573323,98403455,99465016

edit: looks like I can shorten it a few chars by direct assignment rather than "push", and I don't need the {}s:

x=[];for(i=0;i<100;i++)x[i]=(Math.random()+"").slice(-8);x.sort();

Answer 17

In OCaml:

List.sort compare (let rec r = function 0 -> [] | a -> (Random.int 9999)::(r (a-1)) in r 100);;

Edit: in OCaml typing that in the toplevel will print out the list, but if you want the list printed to stdout:

List.iter (fun x -> Printf.printf "%d\n" x) (List.sort compare (let rec r = function 0 -> [] | a -> (Random.int 9999)::(r (a-1)) in r 100));;

Answer 18

Perl, a full 8 bytes shorter than nrich's version, and runs under "use warnings;" :)

perl -wle "$,=' ';print sort map {int rand 100} 1..100"

Answer 19

Java:

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Collections;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.Random;

class Rnd {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        List<Integer> list = new ArrayList<Integer>(100);
        for (int i = 0; i < 100; i++) list.add(new Random().nextInt());
        Collections.sort(list);
        System.out.println(list);
    }
}

Answer 20

groovy:

r=new Random()
List l=[]
100.times{ l << r.nextInt(1000) }
l.sort().each { println it }

Answer 21

Windows BATCH: 160. This adds a leading zero's to the numbers, but otherwise the sorting is a little messed up (because sort sorts by characters - it doesn't know anything about numbers).

@echo off
set n=%random%.tmp
call :a >%n%
type %n%|sort
del /Q %n%
exit /B 0
:a
for /L %%i in (1,1,100) do call :b
exit /B 0
:b
set i=00000%random%
echo %i:~-5%

As a one-liner and way shorter (72):

cmd/v/c"for /l %x in (0,1,99)do @(set x=0000!RANDOM!&echo !x:~-5!)"|sort

Answer 22

Clojure

(defn gen-rands []
(sort (take 100 (repeatedly #(rand-int Integer/MAX_VALUE)))))

Answer 23

plain old c-code in 167 chars:

main(){int i=100,x[i],n=i;while(i)x[--i]=rand();for(i=0;i<n;i++){int b=x[i],m=i,j=0;for(;j<n;j++)if(x[j]<x[m])m=j;x[i]=x[m];x[m]=b;}i=n;while(i)printf("%d ",x[--i]);}

Answer 24

Java, again

import java.util.*;
class R
{
    public static void main(String[]a)
    {
        List x=new Stack();
        while(x.size()<100)x.add((int)(Math.random()*9e9));
        Collections.sort(x);
        System.out.print(x);
    }
}

i don't think it can be made shorter than this.. i also cut out unnecessary spaces.

LE: oh yes it can :) inspired by ding's post..

import java.util.*;
class R
{
    public static void main(String[]a)
    {
        Set x=new TreeSet();
        while(x.size()<100)x.add((int)(Math.random()*9e9));
        System.out.print(x);
    }
}

Answer 25

Prolog, 78 characters:

r([]).
r([H|T]):-random(0,1000000,H),r(T).
f(L):-length(R,100),r(R),sort(R,L).

usage in the REPL:

| ?- f(X).

X = [1251,4669,8789,8911,14984,23742,56213,57037,63537,91400,92620,108276,119079,142333,147308,151550,165893,166229,168975,174102,193298,205352,209594,225097,235321,266204,272888,275878,297271,301940,303985,345550,350280,352111,361328,364440,375854,377868,385223,392425,425140,445678,450775,457946,462066,468444,479858,484924,491882,504791,513519,517089,519866,531646,539337,563568,571166,572387,584991,587890,599029,601745,607147,607666,608947,611480,657287,663024,677185,691162,699737,710479,726470,726654,734985,743713,744415,746582,751525,779632,783294,802581,802856,808715,822814,837585,840118,843627,858917,862213,875946,895935,918762,925689,949127,955871,988494,989959,996765,999664]

yes

As some of my teachers would say, it's self explanatory :-)

Answer 26

Golfscript - 15 chars

[100.{rand}+*]$

Answer 27

xkcd-style Python answer - shorter than the current one!

print [4]*100

Real answer, 63 chars:

from random import*;print sorted(randrange(9e9)for i in[0]*100)

Answer 28

C#:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;

class App
{
  static void Main()
  {
    List<int> TheList = new List<int>();
    Random r = new Random();
    for ( int i = 0; i < 10; i++ )
      TheList.Add(r.Next());
    TheList.Sort();
    foreach ( int i in TheList )
      Console.WriteLine(i);
  }
}

If you're going for the raw character count you might be able to compress this a bit more. But basically this is it.

Edit: Attempt 2:

using System;

class App
{
  static void Main()
  {
    Random r= new Random();
    for ( int i = 0, j=0; i < 100; i++ )
      Console.WriteLine(j+=r.Next(int.MaxValue/100));
  }
}

Answer 29

Python (interactive):

import random
[int(9*random.random())]

What? It creates a list of one random integer, sorts it (trivially), and prints it out.

Ok, here's a serious answer

import random
sorted([int(9*random.random()) for x in range(9)])

It generates 9 random integers in [0, 9), sorts them, and prints them (in an interactive shell).

And here's a shorter variant that actually produces the 100 required:

from random import*
sorted(randint(0,9)for x in' '*100)

Answer 30

Tcl is dead.

Long live tcl.

Creates a RANDOM (0-99) length list and puts RANDOM (0-99) integers in it.

Also prints to the screen and can be run exactly as shown in a tcl file, or the tcl shell.

set l {}
proc r {} {expr { int(floor(rand()*99)) }}
for {set i 0} {$i<[r]} {incr i} {lappend l [r]}
puts [lsort -integer $l]

---

PHP is nice too.

confirms completely to exercise

<?
for($i=100;$i--;$l[]=rand());
sort($l);
print_r($l);

Answer 31

mzscheme -e "(sort (build-list 100 (λ x (random 9))) <)"

He said the least chars, not the least bytes. =)

Answer 32

C#

If you're okay with imposing a limit on the array size then:

Array.ForEach(Guid.NewGuid().ToByteArray().OrderBy(c => c).ToArray(), c => Console.WriteLine(c));

Otherwise, a less restrictive (but slightly more verbose) angle could be taken:

var r = new Random();
(new int[100]).Select(i => r.Next()).OrderBy(i => i).ToList().ForEach(Console.WriteLine);

Okay, I think this is the last time I'm coming back to this one...

116 chars:

using System;
class A
{
    static void Main()
    {
        var r=new Random();
        var n=1D;
        for(int i=0;i<100;i++,Console.WriteLine(n+=r.Next()));
    }
}

Answer 33

C++ is not the right tool for this job, but here goes:

#include <algorithm>
#include <stdio.h>

#define each(x) n=0; while(n<100) x

int main()
{
     int v[100], n;
     srand(time(0));
     each(v[n++]=rand());
     std::sort(v, v+100);
     each(printf("%d\n",v[n++]));
}

Answer 34

mackenir: an improvement by 7 characters:

namespace System.Linq {
    class A {
        static void Main() {
            var r = new Random();
            new A[100].Select( i => r.Next() ).OrderBy( i => i ).ToList().ForEach( Console.WriteLine );
        }
    }
}

Answer 35

C++ with boost. Too bad that #include's are already half of all the text :)

#include <boost/bind.hpp>
#include <algorithm>
#include <vector>
#include <iterator>
#include <cstdlib>
int main() {
    using namespace std;
    vector<int> a(100);
    transform(a.begin(), a.end(), a.begin(), boost::bind(&rand));
    sort(a.begin(), a.end());
    copy(a.begin(), a.end(), ostream_iterator<int>(cout, "\n"));
}

Answer 36

#!perl

print join "\n", sort { $a <=> $b } map { int rand 0xFFFFFFFF } 1 .. 100;

Answer 37

python, 71 chars

import random
print sorted(random.randint(0,2**31)for i in range(100))

Answer 38

Coldfusion:

<cfloop index="i" to="100" from="1">
    <cfset a[i] = randrange(1,10000)>
</cfloop>

<cfset ArraySort(a, "numeric")>

<cfdump var="#a#">

Answer 39

Qt4 version (c++), 116 chars.

#include <QtCore>
int main(){QList<int>l;int i=101;while(--i)l<<qrand()%101;qSort(l);foreach(i,l)printf("%d\n",i);}

-> wc -c main.cpp
116 main.cpp

Answer 40

C#

var sequence = Enumerable.Range(1, 100)
                         .OrderBy(n => n * n * (new Random()).Next());

foreach (var el in sequence.OrderBy(n => n))
    Console.Out.WriteLine(el);

F#

let rnd = System.Random(System.DateTime.Now.Millisecond)

List.init 100 (fun _ -> rnd.Next(100)) 
|> List.sort 
|> List.iter (fun (x: int) -> System.Console.Out.WriteLine(x))

Answer 41

C without allocating an array (basically keeps adding a random integer to the last value printed, which implicitly sorts):

#include <stdlib.h>

int main(int argc, char **argv) {
    int i;
    unsigned long baseline = 0;
    srand(atoi(argv[1]));
    for ( i = 0 ; i < 100 ; i++ ) {
        baseline += rand();
        printf("%ld\n", baseline);
    }

}

which, with the usual obfuscation+removal of newlines, goes down to 136 chars.

ps: run with $RANDOM on the command line, obviously.

Answer 42

C#

var r=new Random();
var l=from i in new C[100] let n=r.Next() orderby n select n;

81 characters (including newlines)

Answer 43

Matlab:

arrayfun( @(x) display(x), sort( rand(1,100) ) )

Answer 44

Using C - 152 chars

main(){int a=100,b,t,x[a];while(a--)x[a]=rand();a=100;while(b=a--)while(b--)if(x[a]>x[b]){t=x[a];x[a]=x[b];x[b]=t;}a=100;while(a--)printf("%d\n",x[a]);}

or expanded

#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
    int a=100,b,t,x[a];

    while(a--)x[a]=rand();
    a=100;

    while(b=a--)
        while(b--)
            if(x[a]>x[b])
            {
                t=x[a];
                x[a]=x[b];
                x[b]=t;
            }

    a=100;
    while(a--)
        printf("%d\n",x[a]);
}

Answer 45

R:

sort(round(runif(100)*99+1))

Answer 46

Windows command shell - 71 characters

cmd/v/c"for /L %i in (0,1,99)do @set r=     !random!&echo !r:~-5!"|sort

Answer 47

Scala: (61 characters)

1 to 100 map {_ ⇒ Random.nextInt} sortBy identity foreach println

EDIT:

Could be compressed even more (56 characters) by defining identity inline.

1 to 100 map {_ ⇒ Random.nextInt} sortBy {i ⇒ i} foreach println

Answer 48

prints random 100 random numbers in the range [0,100] sorted in C++

srand((unsigned int)time(NULL)); list<int> r;
for (int i=0;i<100;i++) r.push_back((int)((100)*rand()/(float)RAND_MAX));
r.sort();
for (list<int>::iterator j=r.begin();j!=r.end();j++) cout << *j << endl;

If you don't care about parity then replace r.push_back((int)((100)*rand()/(float)RAND_MAX)) with r.push_back(rand()%(101))

--

Here's a complete program in 200 characters:

#include <algorithm>
#include <iostream>
#include <random>
using namespace std;int main(){int a[100];generate_n(a,100,tr1::mt19937());sort(a,a+100);for(int i=0;i<100;++i){cout<<a[i]<<endl;}return 0;}

Array notation was shorter than any standard container I could find. tr1::mt19937 was the shortest random number generator I could find. using namespace std; was shorter than several instances of std::.

Answer 49

Common Lisp (as I remember it, might have a few details wrong):

(setf a '(99 61 47))
(setf a (sort a))
(princ a)

The numbers are of course random; I chose them right now by dice roll.

(Maybe we could tighten up the definition a little?)

Answer 50

Perl command line:

perl -e 'print $_, "\n" foreach sort map {int rand 10} (1..10)'

Prints 10 integers between 0 and 9 and sorts them.

Answer 51

Java:

  public void randList()
  {
  final int NUM_INTS = 100;
  Random r = new Random();
  List<Integer> s = new ArrayList<Integer>();

  for(int i = 0; i < NUM_INTS; i++)
    s.add(r.nextInt());

  Collections.sort(s);

  for(Integer i : s)
    System.out.println(i);
  }

Could be shorter, but the above is pretty clear and mostly-best-practices-compliant. This will generate warnings (raw types) and has bad variable names but is a little shorter.

  void rl()
  {
  Random r = new Random();
  List s = new ArrayList();

  for(int i = 0; i < 100; i++)
    s.add(r.nextInt());

  for(Object i : s)
    System.out.println((Integer) i);
  }

Answer 52

I wouldn't accept that as program spec, too imprecise! :-)

Lua version:

t=table;l={}for i=1,20 do l[#l+1]=math.random(99)end;t.sort(l)print(t.concat(l,' '))

Might be slightly shortened, there might be smarter code too.

Answer 53

A command line PHP one-liner (yes, the trailing semicolon is required...)

php -r 'while (++$i % 101) $j[] = rand(0, 99); sort($j); echo implode(" ", $j)."\n";'

Answer 54

VB - 151 chars:

Not quite as elegant as C# sadly...

Sub Main()
    Dim r = New Random
    Enumerable.Range(1, 100) _
      .Select(Function(i) r.Next) _
      .OrderBy(Function(i) i) _
      .ToList _
      .ForEach(AddressOf Console.WriteLine)
End Sub

Answer 55

This is not a joke. It's the best I can do at the moment. :)

JavaScript:

a=[];for(i=0;i<100;i++){b=Math.round(Math.random()*100);a[i]=b;}c=0;
while(c==0){c=1;for(j=0;j<99;j++){if(a[j]>a[j+1]){d=a[j];a[j]=a[j+1];a[j+1]=d;c=0;}}}
for(k=0;k<100;k++)document.write(a[k],"<br>")

Answer 56

Here's the best I can do with a Delphi 2007 Win32 console app (aside from removing some line breaks and indents):

{$APPTYPE CONSOLE}
var a:array[0..99] of integer; i,j,k:integer;
begin
  FOR i:=0 to 99 DO a[i]:=random(maxint)+1;
  FOR i:=0 to 98 DO
    FOR j:=i+1 to 99 DO
      IF a[j]<a[i] THEN begin
        k:=a[i]; a[i]:=a[j]; a[j]:=k
      end;
  FOR i:=0 to 99 DO writeln(a[i])
end.

AFAIK, none of the standard units contain a sorting routine, so I had to write the shortest one I know. Also, since I haven't called Randomize, it produces the same result every time it's run.

Edit: I took "positive integers" to mean every positive (non-zero) number in the range of the integer type, hence the use of maxint (a system constant) and "+1" to ensure it's not zero.

Answer 57

Plain old C, not so minimal as to be obfuscated:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
static int cmp(const void *a, const void *b)
{
    return *(const int *) a > *(const int *) b;
}
int main(void)
{
    int x[100], i;
    for(i = 0; i < 100; i++)
            x[i] = rand();
    qsort(x, 100, sizeof *x, cmp);
    for(i = 0; i < 100; i++)
            printf("%d\n", x[i]);
    return 0;
}

This builds without warnings using gcc 4.1.2 in Linux. In real code, I would of course:

• Return EXIT_SUCCESS rather than 0
• Only write the 100 once, and use sizeof x for the remaining references

Answer 58

Pike

void main() {
  array a=({});
  while (sizeof(a)<100) a+=({random(1<<30)});
  sort(a);
  foreach (a, int b) write("%d\n",b);
}

Answer 59

I can't edit or comment, so here's Java v3 (the previous 2 had negative numbers):

import java.util.TreeSet;

class Test {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Collection<Double> s = new TreeSet<Double>();
        while (s.size() < 100) s.add(Math.random());
        System.out.println(s);
    }
}

Answer 60

Erlang, 157 chars

-module (intpr).
-export ([q/0]).
q() ->
    lists:foldl(
    fun(X,A)->io:format("~p,",[X]),A end, 
    n, 
    lists:sort( 
        lists:map(fun(_)->random:uniform(100) end, lists:seq(1,100)) 
    )
    ).

Sure it's not the best erlang solution, basically it creates a list from 1 to 100 (only because I didn't found a better/shorter way to initialize the list) and map every item with a random integer (<100), then the resulting list is sorted. Finally the list is "folded", used just as a way to get through all the items and print them.

Answer 61

You would think SQL would be good at this sort of thing:-

SELECT * FROM
(SELECT TRUNC(dbms_random.value(1,100)) r
FROM user_objects
WHERE rownum < 101)
ORDER BY r

That's an Oracle version in 108 characters. Someone might do better in a different variant using a TOP 100 syntax.

Edit, in 82 characters:

select trunc(dbms_random.value(1,100))
from dual 
connect by level < 101
order by 1

Answer 62

Delphi... alphabetically sorted version

program PrintRandomSorted;

{$APPTYPE CONSOLE}
uses SysUtils,Classes;

var I:Byte;
begin
  with TStringList.Create do
  begin
    for I in [0..99] do
      Add(IntToStr(Random(MaxInt)));
    Sort; Write(Text); Free;
  end;
end.

---

Properly sorted, using generics..

program PrintRandomSorted;
{$APPTYPE CONSOLE}
uses SysUtils, generics.collections;
var I:Byte;S:String;
begin
  with TList<Integer>.Create do
  begin
    for I in [0..99] do Add(Random(MaxInt));
    Sort;
    for I in [0..99] do WriteLn(Items[I]);
    Free;
  end;
end.

Answer 63

Notice that nobody gave an answer in C or C++ ?

Once they were called high-level languages (compared to assembler). Well I guess now they are the low-level.