How to select a random item from an array in shell

Question

I\'m creating a bot in Shell Script:

# Array with expressions
expressions=(\"Ploink Poink\" \"I Need Oil\" \"Some Bytes are Missing!\" \"Poink Poink\" \"Piii         


        

Answer 1

Change the line where you define selectedexpression to

selectedexpression=${expressions[$RANDOM % ${#expressions[@]} ]}

You want your index into expression to be a random number from 0 to the length of the expression array. This will do that.