Sampling without replacement using awk

Question

I have a lot of text files that look like this:

>ALGKAHOLAGGATACCATAGATGGCACGCCCT
>BLGKAHOLAGGATACCATAGATGGCACGCCCT
>HLGKAHOLAGGATACCATAGATGGCACGCCC         


        

Answer 1

Yes, but I wouldn't. I would use shuf or sort -R (neither POSIX) to randomize the file and then select the first n lines using head.

If you really want to use awk for this, you would need to use the rand function, as Mark Setchell points out.