SYNOPSIS use File::Random::Pick qw(random_line); my $line = random_line("/usr/share/dict/words"); my @lines = random_line("/usr/share/dict/words", 3); DESCRIPTION This module can return random lines from a specified file. Compared to the existing File::Random, this module does not return duplicates. I have also submitted a ticket to incorporate this functionality into File::Random [1]. FUNCTIONS random_line($path [ , $num_lines ]) => list Return random lines from a specified file. Will not return duplicates (meaning, will not return the same line of the file twice, but might still return duplicates if two or more lines contain the same content). Will die on failure to open file. $num_lines defaults to 1. If there are less than $num_lines available in the file, will return just the available number of lines. The algorithm used is from perlfaq (perldoc -q "random line"), which scans the file once. The algorithm is for returning a single line and is modified to support returning multiple lines. SEE ALSO File::Random File::RandomLine [1] https://rt.cpan.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=109384