How to get a random filename from a directory and using it within a command?

Question

play ~/Music/audio0.flac repeat -

A command for playing a single specific audio file on repeat.

play ~/Music/${random_audio_file} repeat -

A pseudo command for playing a single random audio file from the given directory (~/Music/), also on repeat.

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How to do the latter as a real working command?

Answer 1

You can leverage the shuf command for that. Try:

play "$(find ~/Music -name '*.flac' | shuf -n 1)" repeat -

The double quotes are necessary in case your filenames may contain spaces.

Answer 2

This command will get a random .flac file and play it using omxplayer. Modify the command to suite your player.

find . -type f -name '*.flac' | shuf -n 1 | xargs -d "\n" omxplayer