Random sorting of text items

Question

I would like to produce random texts in which some specific items would be sorted and printed in a random order, varying at each compilation. The intended purpose is to remove any hidden bias in the way the list is constructed. I have looked for a ready to use package or solution, but did not find any.

More specifically, I am working on the basis of something like this.

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage[a4paper]{geometry}
\newcommand{\tobesorted}{}
\newenvironment{sortingitems}{}{}
\begin{document}
In my farm there are:
\begin{sortingitems}
\tobesorted pigs,
\tobesorted cows,
\tobesorted rabbits,
\tobesorted gnus,
\end{sortingitems}
and they all live in perfect harmony.
\end{document} 

which would print the list of animals in a random order that would vary at each compilation. In my intended application, I would have several a few hundreds short items to be sorted. For the moment, I do not care much about punctuation at the end of the last item (but I am also interested).

Answer 1

You can use the built-in \seq_shuffle:N command from the kernel to shuffle items and then use \seq_map_inline:Nn to map the items to your list.

Here's a version that puts everything into a single command. If you prefer you could make the command just do the shuffling and mapping and insert that command inside each list environment.

\documentclass{article}
\ExplSyntaxOn
\seq_new:N \l_denis_shuffle_items_seq
\NewDocumentCommand{\shuffleitems}{m}{
    \seq_set_from_clist:Nn \l_denis_shuffle_items_seq {#1}
    \seq_shuffle:N \l_denis_shuffle_items_seq
    \begin{enumerate}
    \seq_map_inline:Nn \l_denis_shuffle_items_seq {\item ##1}
    \end{enumerate}
} 
\ExplSyntaxOff
\begin{document}
\shuffleitems{pigs, cows,rabbits,gnus}
\end{document}

In your specific use case, if you want the enumerated items as a comma separated list inserted in running text rather than an enumeration, you can use the \seq_use:Nnnn macro to do that. This is a very nice macro which takes a sequence and then 3 arguments corresponding to the elements you want between 2, more than two, and the final 2 elements.

\documentclass{article}
\ExplSyntaxOn
\seq_new:N \l_denis_shuffle_questions_seq
\NewDocumentCommand{\shuffleitems}{m}{
    \seq_set_from_clist:Nn \l_denis_shuffle_questions_seq {#1}
    \seq_shuffle:N \l_denis_shuffle_questions_seq
    \seq_use:Nnnn \l_denis_shuffle_questions_seq {~and~}{,~}{,~and~}
}

\ExplSyntaxOff
\begin{document}
The \shuffleitems{pigs, cows,rabbits,gnus} all live in perfect harmony.
\end{document}

Answer 2

A way using knitr:

MWE.Rnw (Rstudio) or MWE.Rtex (Overleaf):

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
<<echo=F,>>=
v <- c("pigs","cows","rabbits","gnus")
@
\begin{itemize} 
\item I have \Sexpr{combine_words(sample(v))}
\item You have \Sexpr{combine_words(sample(v))}
\item He has \Sexpr{combine_words(sample(v))}
\item We have  
<<foo, echo=F,results='asis'>>=
cat("\\begin{itemize}\\item ")
cat(sample(v), sep="\n\\item ")
cat("\\end{itemize} ")
@
\item They have  
<<morefoo, echo=F,results='asis'>>=
<<foo>>
@
\end{itemize} 
\end{document}