Generating Unique Random Numbers in Java

Question

I'm trying to get random numbers between 0 and 100. But I want them to be unique, not repeated in a sequence. For example if I got 5 numbers, they should be 82,12,53,64,32 and not 82,12,53,12,32 I used this, but it generates same numbers in a sequence.

Random rand = new Random();
selected = rand.nextInt(100);

Answer 1

you can use boolean array to fill the true if value taken else set navigate through boolean array to get value as per given below

package study;

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.List;

/*
Created By Sachin  Rane on Jul 18, 2018
*/
public class UniqueRandomNumber {
    static Boolean[] boolArray;
    public static void main(String s[]){
        List<Integer> integers = new ArrayList<>();


        for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
            integers.add(i);
        }


        //get unique random numbers
        boolArray = new Boolean[integers.size()+1];
        Arrays.fill(boolArray, false);
        for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
            System.out.print(getUniqueRandomNumber(integers) + " ");

        }

    }

    private static int  getUniqueRandomNumber(List<Integer> integers) {
        int randNum =(int) (Math.random()*integers.size());
        if(boolArray[randNum]){
            while(boolArray[randNum]){
                randNum++;
                if(randNum>boolArray.length){
                    randNum=0;
                }
            }
            boolArray[randNum]=true;
            return randNum;
        }else {
            boolArray[randNum]=true;
            return randNum;
        }

    }

}

Answer 2

With Java 8+ you can use the ints method of Random to get an IntStream of random values then distinct and limit to reduce the stream to a number of unique random values.

ThreadLocalRandom.current().ints(0, 100).distinct().limit(5).forEach(System.out::println);

Random also has methods which create LongStreams and DoubleStreams if you need those instead.

If you want all (or a large amount) of the numbers in a range in a random order it might be more efficient to add all of the numbers to a list, shuffle it, and take the first n because the above example is currently implemented by generating random numbers in the range requested and passing them through a set (similarly to Rob Kielty's answer), which may require generating many more than the amount passed to limit because the probability of a generating a new unique number decreases with each one found. Here's an example of the other way:

List<Integer> range = IntStream.range(0, 100).boxed()
        .collect(Collectors.toCollection(ArrayList::new));
Collections.shuffle(range);
range.subList(0, 99).forEach(System.out::println);

Answer 3

One clever way to do this is to use exponents of a primitive element in modulus.

For example, 2 is a primitive root mod 101, meaning that the powers of 2 mod 101 give you a non-repeating sequence that sees every number from 1 to 100 inclusive:

2^0 mod 101 = 1
2^1 mod 101 = 2
2^2 mod 101 = 4
...
2^50 mod 101 = 100
2^51 mod 101 = 99
2^52 mod 101 = 97
...
2^100 mod 101 = 1

In Java code, you would write:

void randInts() {
int num=1;
for (int ii=0; ii<101; ii++) {
    System.out.println(num);
    num= (num*2) % 101;
    }
}

Finding a primitive root for a specific modulus can be tricky, but Maple's "primroot" function will do this for you.

Answer 4

Check this

public class RandomNumbers {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub
        int n = 5;
        int A[] = uniqueRandomArray(n);
        for(int i = 0; i<n; i++){
            System.out.println(A[i]);
        }
    }
    public static int[] uniqueRandomArray(int n){
        int [] A = new int[n];
        for(int i = 0; i< A.length; ){
            if(i == A.length){
                break;
            }
            int b = (int)(Math.random() *n) + 1;
            if(f(A,b) == false){
                A[i++] = b;
            } 
        }
        return A;
    }
    public static boolean f(int[] A, int n){
        for(int i=0; i<A.length; i++){
            if(A[i] == n){
                return true;
            }
        }
        return false;
    }
}

Answer 5

Use Collections.shuffle() on all 100 numbers and select the first five, as shown here.

Answer 6

I re-factored Anand's answer to make use not only of the unique properties of a Set but also use the boolean false returned by the set.add() when an add to the set fails.

import java.util.HashSet;
import java.util.Random;
import java.util.Set;

public class randomUniqueNumberGenerator {

    public static final int SET_SIZE_REQUIRED = 10;
    public static final int NUMBER_RANGE = 100;

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Random random = new Random();

        Set set = new HashSet<Integer>(SET_SIZE_REQUIRED);

        while(set.size()< SET_SIZE_REQUIRED) {
            while (set.add(random.nextInt(NUMBER_RANGE)) != true)
                ;
        }
        assert set.size() == SET_SIZE_REQUIRED;
        System.out.println(set);
    }
}