Random playlist algorithm

Question

I need to create a list of numbers from a range (for example from x to y) in a random order so that every order has an equal chance.

I need this for a music player I

Answer 1

You're going to have to allocate some memory, but it doesn't have to be a lot. You can reduce the memory footprint (the degree by which I'm unsure, as I don't know that much about the guts of C#) by using a bool array instead of int. Best case scenario this will only use (count / 8) bytes of memory, which isn't too bad (but I doubt C# actually represents bools as single bits).

    public static IEnumerable RandomIndexes(int count) {
        Random rand = new Random();
        bool[] used = new bool[count];

        int i;
        for (int counter = 0; counter < count; counter++) {
            while (used[i = rand.Next(count)]); //i = some random unused value
            used[i] = true;
            yield return i;
        }
    }

Hope that helps!