random number – Equivalence

Often at work I find the need to generate a set of n unique integers in a specified range. In order to do this as efficiently and as easily as possible, I created a small C# class, which a colleague thought may be of general interest. Hence, I’m posting it here. I’m sure someone else has come up with a similar (or better) way to do this in the past, but I’m sharing my way regardless 😀 .

The code is shown below (and you download the C# class here):

 class UniqueSetGenerator
 {
      private int[] store_;
      private int size_;
      private Random random_;
 
      public UniqueSetGenerator(int size, int start)
      {
          size_ = size;
          store_ = new int[size];
          random_ = new Random();
          PopulateArray(start);
      }
 
      private void PopulateArray(int start)
      {
          for (int i = 0; i < size_; i++)
              store_[i] = start++;
      }
 
      private int Delete(int pos)
      {
          int val = store_[pos];
          store_[pos] = store_[--size_];
          return val;
      }
 
      public int GetRandomNumber()
      {
          if (size_ <= 0)
             return -1;
 
          return Delete(random_.Next(size_));
      }
 }

I think it’s pretty easy to see how this works, so I will not go into it in much detail discussing it, but the sequence of figures below shows the basic operations.

First populate the array with the values.

Use the Random class to obtain our first random number - in this case 6. Now copy the value at position size_ in the array to position 6, and decrement size_. Note: not we don't actually delete anything from the array.

We then use the Random class to generate another random number in our reduced range - in this case 3. We then copy the value at position size_ (i.e. 9) to position 3, and then decrement the size_ count as before. This process continues until size_ is reduced to 0.

So when would you require something like this? Well, say you need to generate unique random IDs with values 1 to 10, then you can use the class as follows:

    UniqueSetGenerator uniqueSet = new UniqueSetGenerator(10, 1);
 
    for(int i = 0; i < 9; i++)
    {
        int id = uniqueSet.GetRandomNumber();
 
        // Now do something with the id....
    }

For the moment I have only included a C# version but I will update this post with a Java version soon. Hope some of you find this useful.