How to make a random permutation

[hughes@ah.com (Eric Hughes)]

A deck shuffling method was presented:

   //shuffle the deck:
   for (i=0; i<=10000; i++)
    {
     c1=rand() % (4*13+2);
     c2=rand() % (4*13+2);
     swapcards(&cards[c1],&cards[c2]);
    }


I continue to be amazed at how few people know an algorithm to
generate a truly random permutation efficiently.  There's one (due to
Parnas, if I remember correctly) which generates each of the 52!
possible permutations with equal probability, runs with exactly 52
loop iterations (i.e. a 200 time speed up over the above), and is
provably correct by a simple induction.

Assume random(x) returns a random integer between 0 and x.

a[ 0 ] = 0 ;
for ( x = 1 ; x < N ; ++ x ) {
    i = random( x ) ;
    if ( i == x ) {
	a[ i ] = i ;
    } else {
	a[ x ] = a[ i ] ;
        a[ i ] = x ;
    }
}

Proof is left to the reader.  (Hint: use induction on N.)

Eric