Question

I’ve write the following code in bash, this code tends to print a matrix of 200×13 random numbers (we have 200 line printed with 13 numbers per line). I want this code to be more flexible such that one can change size of the matrix printed (number of line and number of number per line) without re-write the code

for (( k = 0; k < 200; k++  ))
do

    echo $(( $RANDOM - 16384 )) $(( $RANDOM - 16384 )) $(( $RANDOM - 16384 )) $(( $RANDOM - 16384 )) $(( $RANDOM - 16384 )) $(( $RANDOM - 16384 )) $(( $RANDOM - 16384 )) $(( $RANDOM - 16384 )) $(( $RANDOM - 16384 )) $(( $RANDOM - 16384 )) $(( $RANDOM - 16384 )) $(( $RANDOM - 16384 )) $(( $RANDOM - 16384 ))

done

thanks for any help.

Answer 1

First, you want to change the printing of the columns to another for-loop:

for (( k = 0; k < 200; k++  ))
do
 for (( j = 0; j < 3; j++))
 do
    echo -n $(( $RANDOM - 16384 ))" "  # print your random number

 done

 echo     # print newline 
done

Then, you can parametrize your k max and j max:

rows=200   # set the number of rows
cols=3    # set the number of columns

for (( k = 0; k < $rows; k++  ))
do
   for (( j = 0; j < $cols; j++))
   do
       echo -n $(( $RANDOM - 16384 ))" "   

   done

   echo
done