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Get A Random Line From A Text File On The Mac Command Line

I'm working on a little command to display a random quote every time I open a new terminal window. I setup a file with a bunch of quotes. Each one is on its own line.

To pull a random quote/line, I'm using:

Code

sort -R quotes.txt | head -1

### Details

- The `sort -R` creates a randomized set of lines from the file - Then `head -1` cuts it down to just the first line. It works great

### Notes:

- Lots of notes on the web say to use `shuf -n 1`, but that's not installed by default on my machine running macOS 12.x Monterey. - The `sort` and `head` commands were available on my machine without having to install anything. That said, it's possible that something else that I installed with homebrew also installed them. Your milage may vary.