Random Permutation of Index Array

QUESTION: I wonder if any of you have an IDL function that gives a random permutation of an array index, or know of a straightforward way to compute it?

In Matlab such a function is called "randperm(n)" where n is the length of the array. For example, if one gives the integer 8, then it returns a length 8 integer array with values 0 to 7, randomly permutated.

It is not as simple as it sounds, since the indices are unique. I tried variations of randomly shifting indices (with SHIFT) from INDGEN with a random number generator, and the values were not "jumbled" satisfactorily.

ANSWER: Ken Bowman from the IDL newsgroup has provided an answer.

If I understand your question, you can just generate n uniform random variables and then sort the result.

   IDL> x = LINDGEN(10)
   IDL> y = RANDOMU(dseed, 10)
   IDL> print, x
        0   1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9
   IDL> print, y
        0.138249  0.0700486  0.310873  0.610514  0.332400  0.135694  0.975024  0.370555  0.763737  0.0268037
   IDL> z = x[SORT(y)]
   IDL> print, z
        9   1   5   0   2   4   7   3    8   6

Of course, written as a function, it would look something like this:

   FUNCTION RandPerm, numberOfElements, SEED=seed
      x = Lindgen(numberOfElements)
      RETURN, x[Sort(Randomu(seed, numberOfElements))]
   END