C# Shuffle List - Shuffle A List In C#

Do you want to Shuffle A List In C#?

In this blog post, we will show you how you can shuffle a list in C# using the Random function.

I remember creating a shuffle method when I was creating a poker application and needed to shuffle a list of cards from a deck.

I had to use the Math.Random method to randomly pick a card from the list of cards and then assign them to a new list.

Let's see this in action.

Shuffle A List In C# Using Math.Random() Method

As we know, we can use the Math.Random() method and it gives us a random integer out of the given range.

We will make use of this Math.Random method to shuffle list in C#.

Let's look at some code.

public static void Main() { // List Of Integers From 1 TO 20 var listOfNumbersInOrder = new List() { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 }; var newShuffledList = ShuffleIntList(listOfNumbersInOrder); foreach (var item in newShuffledList) { Console.WriteLine(item); } Console.ReadLine(); } public static List ShuffleIntList(List list) { var random = new Random(); var newShuffledList = new List(); var listcCount = list.Count; for (int i = 0; i < listcCount; i++) { var randomElementInList = random.Next(0, list.Count); newShuffledList.Add(list[randomElementInList]); list.Remove(list[randomElementInList]); } return newShuffledList; }

Result:

// A random and shuffled result (will be totally different next time you run the function) 3 14 15 5 6 4 9 16 17 19 18 8 1 13 10 11 20 2 12 7

As we can see in the code example above, we loop through the list 20 times (which is the count of items in the list).

Every time, we take a random number and then pick an element from the list. We use this element to create a new shuffled list.

This way, we can make sure that the list is a shuffled list everytime.

Shuffle List Of Strings In C# Using Math.Random() Method

Just how we used the above method to create a ShuffleList() method, this time, we will go one step ahead and we will create a generic method which will shuffle any list (not just shuffle a list of strings)

Let's use C# generics and shuffle a list.

public static void Main() { var listOfStringsInOrder = new List() { "one", "two", "three", "four", "five" }; var newShuffledListOfStrings = listOfStringsInOrder.ShuffleIntList(); foreach (var item in newShuffledListOfStrings) { Console.WriteLine(item); } Console.ReadLine(); } public static class ListExtensions { public static List ShuffleIntList(this List list) { var random = new Random(); var newShuffledList = new List(); var listcCount = list.Count; for (int i = 0; i < listcCount; i++) { var randomElementInList = random.Next(0, list.Count); newShuffledList.Add(list[randomElementInList]); list.Remove(list[randomElementInList]); } return newShuffledList; } }

Result:

// A random and shuffled result (will be totally different next time you run the function) three four one two five

Now that we have created a generic method, we can shuffle a list of any type in C# using this method.