A random number with with START and END the same is not allowed?

[KommuSoft]

fish, version 3.7.0

If we run random with the START and END the same, we get an error:

$ random 0 0
random: END must be greater than START

This makes it harder to use random as a tool in other scripts, since it might be possible that there is exact one option.

I think it would make sense to allow the START and END to be the same and thus then always return the START.

[faho]

Yeah, sure.

If you want to work with a list of options, you can also use random choice like

random choice potato tomato potatoe tomatoe

random choice $foo

to avoid dealing with integers entirely. This will already pick the sole option if you only give it one.

[KommuSoft]

Yes, but typically the list of options might be quite large, so by using choices, this creates a bit of a performance bottleneck. So one can indeed use:

random choice (seq 100000)

for 1'000'000 this will also result in too many parameters anyway.

to get a random index, but blows up memory and and also slows down processing.

But I currently use it as a workaround 🎉 .