perl: shuffle value-sorted hash? - perl

Question

At first sorry for my english - i hope you will understand me.
There is a hash:
$hash{a} = 1;
$hash{b} = 3;
$hash{c} = 3;
$hash{d} = 2;
$hash{e} = 1;
$hash{f} = 1;
I want to sort it by values (not keys) so I have:
for my $key ( sort { $hash{ $a } <=> $hash{ $b } } keys %hash ) { ... }
And at first I get all the keys with value 1, then with value 2, etc... Great.
But if hash is not changing, the order of keys (in this sort-by-value) is always the same.
Question: How can I shuffle sort-results, so every time I run 'for' loop, I get different order of keys with value 1, value 2, etc. ?

Answer 1

Not quite sure I well understand your needs, but is this ok:
use List::Util qw(shuffle);
my %hash;
$hash{a} = 1;
$hash{b} = 3;
$hash{c} = 3;
$hash{d} = 2;
$hash{e} = 1;
$hash{f} = 1;
for my $key (sort { $hash{ $a } <=> $hash{ $b } } shuffle( keys %hash )) {
say "hash{$key} = $hash{$key}"
}

Answer 2

You can simply add another level of sorting, which will be used when the regular sorting method cannot distinguish between two values. E.g.:
sort { METHOD_1 || METHOD_2 || ... METHOD_N } LIST
For example:
sub regular_sort {
my $hash = shift;
for (sort { $hash->{$a} <=> $hash->{$b} } keys %$hash) {
print "$_ ";
};
}
sub random_sort {
my $hash = shift;
my %rand = map { $_ => rand } keys %hash;
for (sort { $hash->{$a} <=> $hash->{$b} ||
$rand{$a} <=> $rand{$b} } keys %$hash ) {
print "$_ ";
};
}

Answer 3

To sort the keys by value, with random ordering of keys with identical values, I see two solutions:
use List::Util qw( shuffle );
use sort 'stable';
my #keys =
sort { $hash{$a} <=> $hash{$b} }
shuffle keys %hash;
or
my #keys =
map $_->[0],
sort { $a->[1] <=> $b->[1] || $a->[2] <=> $b->[2] }
map [ $_, $hash{$_}, rand ],
keys %hash;
The use sort 'stable'; is required to prevent sort from corrupting the randomness of the list returned by shuffle.
The above's use of the Schwartzian Transform is not an attempt at optimisation. I've seen people use rand in the compare function itself to try to achieve the above result, but doing so is buggy for two reasons.
When using "misbehaving" comparisons such as that, the results are documented as being undefined, so sort is allowed to return garbage, repeated elements, missing elements, etc.
Even if sort doesn't return garbage, it won't be a fair sort. The result will be weighed.

Answer 4

You can have two functions for ascending and decending order and use them accordingly like
sub hasAscending {
$hash{$a} <=> $hash{$b};
}
sub hashDescending {
$hash{$b} <=> $hash{$a};
}
foreach $key (sort hashAscending (keys(%hash))) {
print "\t$hash{$key} \t\t $key\n";
}
foreach $key (sort hashDescending (keys(%hash))) {
print "\t$hash{$key} \t\t $key\n";
}

Answer 5

It seems like you want to randomize looping through the keys.
Perl, does not store in sequential or sorted order, but this doesn't seem to be random enough for you, so you may want to create an array of keys and loop through that instead.
First, populate an array with keys, then use a random number algorithm (1..$#length_of_array) to push the key at that position in the array, to the array_of_keys.
If you're trying to randomize the keys of the sorted-by-value hash, that's a little different.
See Codepad
my %hash = (a=>1, b=>3, c=>3, d=>2, e=>1, f=>1);
my %hash_by_val;
for my $key ( sort { $hash{$a} <=> $hash{$b} } keys %hash ) {
push #{ $hash_by_val{$hash{$key}} }, $key;
}
for my $key (sort keys %hash_by_val){
my #arr = #{$hash_by_val{$key}};
my $arr_ubound = $#arr;
for (0..$arr_ubound){
my $randnum = int(rand($arr_ubound));
my $val = splice(#arr,$randnum,1);
$arr_ubound--;
print "$key : $val\n"; # notice: output varies b/t runs
}
}