Nushell has some nice built-in commands to get randomized data.
The random command can be used to get random numbers, strings, and more.
You can use the dice subcommand to get random numbers between 1 and 6.
The command returns a list of integers.
With the option --dice you can specify how many times to throw the dice.
By default the dice has 6 sides, but you can use the option --sides to change that.
You could roll a dice with 2 sides, like flipping a coin, or roll a dice with 10 sides.
In the following examples you can see how to use the random dice command.
With the standard random dice command you see a table with one row.
The first column contains the list index and the second column contains the result of the dice throw:
> random dice # throw a standard dice ╭───┬───╮ │ 0 │ 2 │ ╰───┴───╯
To get the result of the dice throw you can use the first command to get the value of the second column:
> random dice | first # get the result of the dice throw 3
In the following example you can see how to throw a dice 5 times:
> random dice --dice 5 # throw a standard dice 5 times ╭───┬───╮ │ 0 │ 3 │ │ 1 │ 2 │ │ 2 │ 2 │ │ 3 │ 6 │ │ 4 │ 3 │ ╰───┴───╯
To get a dice with only two sides you can use the --sides 2 option:
> random dice --sides 2 # dice with 2 sides, like flipping a coin ╭───┬───╮ │ 0 │ 1 │ ╰───┴───╯
In the next examples the options --sides and --dice are combined:
> random dice --sides 2 --dice 5 # dice with 2 sides, like flipping a coin ╭───┬───╮ │ 0 │ 2 │ │ 1 │ 1 │ │ 2 │ 2 │ │ 3 │ 1 │ │ 4 │ 2 │ ╰───┴───╯
> random dice --sides 10 --dice 5 # dice with 10 sides ╭───┬───╮ │ 0 │ 3 │ │ 1 │ 4 │ │ 2 │ 6 │ │ 3 │ 3 │ │ 4 │ 8 │ ╰───┴───╯
Finally a small example where the result of the dice throw is transformed into a dice icon using the command char --unicode:
> random dice --dice 5 |
each { char --unicode ($in + 2679 | into string) } # transform into dice icons
╭───┬───╮
│ 0 │ ⚀ │
│ 1 │ ⚅ │
│ 2 │ ⚄ │
│ 3 │ ⚂ │
│ 4 │ ⚁ │
╰───┴───╯
Written with Nushell 0.104.0.
