[removed] randomly pair items from array without repeats

Question

I am trying to make a very basic \"secret santa\" generator as one of my first Javascript projects. I have searched for hours for a solution to this problem but so far noth

Answer 1

I'm a tad late, but thought I'd throw my answer in here. It essentially does the same thing @adeneo's does, but it uses the same basic code as OP:

var names = ["Sean","Kyle","Emily","Nick","Cotter","Brian","Jeremy","Kimmy","Pat","Johnny"];
    pickpool = names.slice(0); // Slice the array at the first element to copy it by value

var used = [];
var picks = [];

if (names.length % 2 != 0) {
    alert("You must have an even number of names. You currently have " + names.length + " names.");
}

for( var i = 0; i < names.length; i++){

    var random = Math.floor(Math.random()*pickpool.length)

    if(names[random] == names[i]) {
        // names[random] = names[random++];
        picks.push(names[i] + " gets " + pickpool[random++]);
        pickpool.splice(random++,1);
    } else {
        picks.push(names[i] + " gets " + pickpool[random]);
        pickpool.splice(random,1);
    }
}
console.log("picked array: ");
for(var k=0; k

http://jsfiddle.net/SNJpC/