以霍斯的答案为起点的通用解决方案。

/**
 * @param set a Set in which to look for a random element
 * @param <T> generic type of the Set elements
 * @return a random element in the Set or null if the set is empty
 */
public <T> T randomElement(Set<T> set) {
    int size = set.size();
    int item = random.nextInt(size);
    int i = 0;
    for (T obj : set) {
        if (i == item) {
            return obj;
        }
        i++;
    }
    return null;
}

Perl 5

@hash_keys = (keys %hash);
$rand = int(rand(@hash_keys));
print $hash{$hash_keys[$rand]};

这里有一种方法。

PHP，使用MT:

$items_array = array("alpha", "bravo", "charlie");
$last_pos = count($items_array) - 1;
$random_pos = mt_rand(0, $last_pos);
$random_item = $items_array[$random_pos];

int size = myHashSet.size();
int item = new Random().nextInt(size); // In real life, the Random object should be rather more shared than this
int i = 0;
for(Object obj : myhashSet)
{
    if (i == item)
        return obj;
    i++;
}

以霍斯的答案为起点的通用解决方案。

/**
 * @param set a Set in which to look for a random element
 * @param <T> generic type of the Set elements
 * @return a random element in the Set or null if the set is empty
 */
public <T> T randomElement(Set<T> set) {
    int size = set.size();
    int item = random.nextInt(size);
    int i = 0;
    for (T obj : set) {
        if (i == item) {
            return obj;
        }
        i++;
    }
    return null;
}

Java 8最简单的方法是:

outbound.stream().skip(n % outbound.size()).findFirst().get()

其中n是一个随机整数。当然，它的性能不如使用for(elem: Col)