How to select a random string from an array of strings?

This article demonstrates how to pick a random string from an array of strings.

We can use the random number generator to pick a random item from an array. The following code snippet has an array of author names (strings). We can pick a random author by generating a random number that is less than the number of items in the array and use the random index to pick a random author name in the string.

The Random.Next method generates a random integer and by passing the maximum length of the array means the random number cannot be greater than the number of items in the array. 

using System;  
public class RandomStringInArraySample  
{  
public static void Main()  
{  
// A array of authors  
string[] authors = { "Mahesh Chand", "Jeff Prosise", "Dave McCarter", "Allen O'neill",  
"Monica Rathbun", "Henry He", "Raj Kumar", "Mark Prime",  
"Rose Tracey", "Mike Crown" };  
  
// Create a Random object  
Random rand = new Random();  
// Generate a random index less than the size of the array.  
int index = rand.Next(authors.Length);  
// Display the result.  
Console.WriteLine($"Randomly selected author is {authors[index]}");  
  
Console.ReadKey();  
}  
}  

Figure 1

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Summary

In this article and code snippet, we discussed how to select a random string from an array of strings.