Skip to main content
St Louis

Back to all posts

How to Shuffle Elements Of A Mutable List In Kotlin?

Published on
3 min read

Table of Contents

Show more
How to Shuffle Elements Of A Mutable List In Kotlin? image

In Kotlin, you can shuffle the elements of a mutable list using the shuffle() method. This method reorders the elements in a random fashion, providing a way to shuffle the list effectively.

To shuffle elements of a mutable list, follow the steps below:

  1. Start by having a mutable list with the elements you want to shuffle. For example, let's assume we have a mutable list called myList containing some integers: val myList = mutableListOf(1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
  2. Simply call the shuffle() function on your mutable list to shuffle its elements: myList.shuffle() After executing this line, the elements of myList will be rearranged randomly.
  3. If you want to shuffle the list using a custom random number generator, you can pass an instance of Random as an argument to the shuffle() method. For example: val random = Random() myList.shuffle(random) This will shuffle the elements of myList using the specified random instance.

That's it! By using the shuffle() method, you can easily shuffle the elements of a mutable list in Kotlin.

What is the easiest method to shuffle elements in a mutable list using Kotlin?

The easiest method to shuffle elements in a mutable list using Kotlin is by using the shuffle() function provided by the Kotlin standard library. This function shuffles the elements in-place within the list. Here is an example:

val list = mutableListOf(1, 2, 3, 4, 5) list.shuffle()

After calling shuffle(), the elements in the list will be shuffled randomly.

How can I rearrange the elements randomly within a mutable list in Kotlin?

To rearrange the elements randomly within a mutable list in Kotlin, you can use the shuffle function provided by the standard library. Here's an example:

fun main() { val list = mutableListOf(1, 2, 3, 4, 5) list.shuffle() println(list) }

The shuffle function randomly reorders the elements in the list. Running the code snippet above will produce different outputs each time because the elements are shuffled randomly.

Sample output:

[3, 5, 4, 2, 1]

Note that the shuffle function modifies the original list in-place. If you want to keep the original list intact, you can create a copy of the list before shuffling:

val list = mutableListOf(1, 2, 3, 4, 5) val shuffledList = list.shuffled() println(shuffledList)

The shuffled function returns a new list with the elements rearranged randomly, leaving the original list unchanged.

Sample output:

[5, 4, 2, 1, 3]

What is the most efficient way to shuffle elements in a mutable list using Kotlin?

The most efficient way to shuffle elements in a mutable list using Kotlin is by using the Collections.shuffle() function from the Java Collections framework.

Here's an example of shuffling a mutable list using Kotlin:

import java.util.Collections

fun main() { val list = mutableListOf(1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

// Shuffle the list
Collections.shuffle(list)

// Print the shuffled list
println(list)

}

This code shuffles the elements of the list in-place, modifying the original list. The Collections.shuffle() function uses an optimized version of the Fisher-Yates algorithm to ensure a uniform shuffling of the elements.