Get Random Elements from Lists

Sometimes we may need to get a number of random elements from lists. To do this, we can use a function to get the indices of these elements first.

The function getIndices takes two parameters: num is the number of elements to get, max is the maximum value of index.

import java.util.concurrent.ThreadLocalRandom

fun getIndices(num: Int, max: Int): Set<Int> {
    val results = mutableSetOf<Int>()
    while (results.size < num) {
        results.add(ThreadLocalRandom.current().nextInt(max))
    }
    return results
}

The function getRandomElements in the code below gets the list of selected elements.

fun <T> getRandomElements(list: List<T>, num: Int): List<T> {
    val indices = getIndices(Math.min(num, list.size), list.size)
    return indices.map { list[it] }
}

We can invoke getRandomElements as below.

getRandomElements(listOf(1, 2, 3), 2)