@ all.
Am a beginning programmer.need ideas not code.
I have a deck contaning 5 card objects and i want to shuffle them in random order.heres what i came up with.
Pick a card and reference it then remove the card from the array.
Then generate a random position bearing in mind that the new position might contain a card so we reference that card too and remove it.
Then we set the first card to the new position.now i want the second card reference to be the basis for the next placement so as not to loose it by setting another refrence mistakenly using a for loop.u think a while loop will be good so that the second card will be placed until thsy are all shuffled b4 the loop terminates.pls be easy on me am still learning.thanks all of you.

mexzony:

@ all.
Am a beginning programmer.need ideas not code.
I have a deck contaning 5 card objects and i want to shuffle them in random order.heres what i came up with.
Pick a card and reference it then remove the card from the array.
Then generate a random position bearing in mind that the new position might contain a card so we reference that card too and remove it.
Then we set the first card to the new position.now i want the second card reference to be the basis for the next placement so as not to loose it by setting another refrence mistakenly using a for loop.u think a while loop will be good so that the second card will be placed until thsy are all shuffled b4 the loop terminates.pls be easy on me am still learning.thanks all of you.

You'll go far if u stick wit the bolded.

Back to your question, from what i can see, you've pretty much solved the problem. You pick card A and card B and switch positions and voila, ur done. Only thing then is, you can do this as many times as u like(this is where ur loop should come in. A for or while loop will suffice).

The way i shuffle cards is kinda related to the selection sort algorithm. If you want to scatter, manipulate the way you arrange. . .  Anyways thats just my method.

Am SUPER happy that you actually don't want code! I love working with people like you,  keep it up!

Back on topic, am just going to explain my way. Firstly you have to understand the selection sort. When you do that, come back to read this algorithm.

The algorithm is very easy! Before i explain it in detail, am going to give you the very basic algorithm. Instead of moving the biggest item to the end of the list or beginning(depending on how you are to sort), you take a random element to the end!

Read the selection sort and understand how it works in DETAILS! Then tweak the algorithm to work the way i stated above.

Dont forget that you can tweak something else, doesn't have to be my way! If already know something like the bubble sort, you can also tweak that.

Goodluck!

You could also generate a random number between [0,1] for each card.

Then sort the cards by the random # you generated.

This isn't as cheap as cycling through each entry and sending to a random location, though (which is what you seem to be suggesting in the original post.)

The swapping approach you suggested is the cheapest, O(N). The one I suggested is NlogN, so isn't as cheap.

Basically what you can do is something like:

for element i in (1,2,3, . . ., N) of the list
    Generate a random integer j in (i, i+1, i+2, . . . , N)
    Take this random integer j and swap A_j with A_i

If you do this, then your new list is randomly permuted. A_1 is a random element from your original list, A_2 is a random element of the remaining elements of the original list, etc.

@ all
WOW thanks a whole lot guys.i finally got it working just now.it really drove me crazy but it was worth it.i spent two days on a small shufle() method,well at least i was able to come up with a solution.i simply created a new array took a random card from the old card array and placed it in the new card,did it for all cards and dispalyed the new card array.it may not be the best solution but when i tested it it really shuffled well to my satisfaction.am glad i did it on my own even if i was fraustrated at times.its worth it.thanks all.

are u programming black jack or cashie?

kunlekunle:

are u programming black jack or cashie?

not really i am just practising to improve my skills where i build a deck of cards and do what u will normaly do to a deck of cards like shuffle,move cards from one deck to another.its simply just playing around u know to test myself.

ekt_bear

i beg, can you program black jack
i need someone who can do cashie - nigerian black jack

kunlekunle:

ekt_bear

i beg, can you program black jack
i need someone who can do cashie - nigerian black jack

I don't know anything about black jack, bro. Sorry