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https://github.com/grahammitchell/antisort

Antisort is a freeware DOS utility that randomizes the lines of its input file, writing the mixed-up lines either to the screen or to another file.
https://github.com/grahammitchell/antisort

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Antisort is a freeware DOS utility that randomizes the lines of its input file, writing the mixed-up lines either to the screen or to another file.

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README 

          
ANTISORT v 0.4b (c) 2001 Graham Mitchell - http://grahammitchell.com/

    6 July 2001



0) TABLE OF CONTENTS



    1) INTRODUCTION

    2) SYNTAX

    3) EXAMPLES

    4) INSTALLATION

    5) KNOWN BUGS

    6) REGISTRATION

    7) VERSION HISTORY

    8) ADDITIONAL INFO



1) INTRODUCTION



    This handy little DOS-based utility takes a file containing several lines

    of text and outputs those same lines to the screen or another file in

    random order.



    This program began after having a conversation with a friend who wanted

    to know if there was a way to do such a thing on a Windows machine. After

    explaining that there wasn't, the problem siezed me and I spent an hour

    hacking something together and mailed him a copy.  He was surprised and

    pleased, but that wasn't the end of the story.  I wasn't happy with how

    the randomizing was being done and so spent a couple of days obsessed

    with how to mix up an array as efficiently as possible but still maintain

    a nice, smoothly random distribution.  This is the end result, with a

    little documentation thrown in.



2) SYNTAX



    The syntax is as follows:



        ANTISORT infile [outfile]



    where



        infile        Specifies the file containing the lines to be

                      randomized.

        outfile       (optional) Specifies the name of a file to put the

                      randomized lines into.  If omitted, output will be to

                      the screen.



3) EXAMPLES



    ANTISORT VALUES.TXT



        Outputs the lines from the file VALUES.TXT to the screen in random

	order.



    ANTISORT VALUES.TXT MIXED_UP.TXT



        Outputs the lines from the file VALUES.TXT to the file MIXED_UP.TXT

	in random order. If MIXED_UP.TXT does not exist it will be created.

	If it does exist, it will be overwritten without prompting.



4) INSTALLATION



    Just copy all the files from this archive into a subdirectory.  To

    uninstall, simply delete them (ANTISORT doesn't require or create any

    .INI files, registry entries, data files, etc).  You might want to put

    ANTISORT.EXE in your path (C:\DOS or C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND).



5) KNOWN BUGS



    ANTISORT doesn't choke on binary files, but it doesn't do anything

    useful.  Please feed it ASCII text only.



    Though it's not really a bug, if the output file you specify already

    exists, it will be overwritten without prompting.  The program also

    doesn't check to see if your input file and output file are the same.

    If they are, things work as expected: the input file is replaced with

    a scrambled version and the original version is lost.



    Also not really a bug is that ANTISORT won't work on really huge files.

    This is because the nature of randomizing lines pretty much requires that

    the whole file be loaded into memory at one time.  Technically, the

    limiting factor is some combination of the number of lines and the

    absolute size of the file.  For example, my computer had no problem

    mixing up a file of over three million lines if the file was no more than

    a few megabytes.  It also easily handled a 40MB file with 500,000 lines.

    But a 60MB file nearly killed my machine due to disk thrashing when

    trying to write out the randomized file.  And a file with five million

    lines bombed out with an "Out Of Memory" error even though it was under

    50MB. The moral of the story is, if you need to randomize lines in a file

    with more than a few million lines or more than 50MB in size, you'll

    either need a better machine than mine or a different utility.



6) REGISTRATION



    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it

    under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the

    Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your

    option) any later version.



    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but

    WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of

    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General

    Public License (LICENSE.TXT) for more details.



    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along

    with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,

    59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307, USA.



    If you enjoy this program, I'd appreciate it if you drop me a line

    saying so.  Please send any bug reports to me, as well.



    I wrote this program for my own education and to help out a friend, and

    have made it available thinking that perhaps there are others who would

    find it useful.  I do not need or expect any money from you if you use

    it; this is freeware in every sense of the word.  However, if you really

    feel you should send me money, I guess that'd be okay, too.



    Thanks for using my program.



7) VERSION HISTORY/CHANGES



    0.4b         fourth release             6 July 2001



        changes from v 0.3b to 0.4b



        + fixed a stupid bug where ANTISORT would quit reading lines of

          input once a blank line was encountered



    0.3b         third release              4 June 2001



        changes from v 0.2b to 0.3b



        + rewrote input routines to handle lines without terminating newline

        + further reduced memory footprint (so you should be able to sort

          even longer/larger files now)

        + sped up input and output

        + now correctly handles zero-length files



    0.2b         second release             1 June 2001



        changes from v 0.1b to 0.2b



        + completely rewrote the "sort", speeding things up by as much as

          130x (!) for large files

        + reduced memory footprint

        + added ability to specify output file on the command-line

        + now licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License

        + source code now included in archive

        + added documentation



    0.1b         initial release           30 May 2001



8) ADDITIONAL INFORMATION



    Name:       asort04b.zip

    Version:    0.4b

    Author:     Graham Mitchell

    WWW:        http://grahammitchell.com/