Creating random strings and shuffling them (for JavaFX ListView)

As a short “note to self,” I just used this Scala code to (a) create a list that contains random strings of different lengths, then (b) shuffle the list of strings to create a more random effect:

def randomString(length: Int) = scala.util.Random.alphanumeric.take(length).mkString

def fakeDataForListView(): Array[String] = {
    val strings = List(
        randomString(10),
        randomString(12),
        randomString(14),
        randomString(16),
        randomString(18)
    )
    scala.util.Random.shuffle(strings).toArray
}

Sample output looks like this in the Scala REPL:

scala> fakeDataForListView()
res0: Array[String] = Array(echWFdISlPJeb7oc48, Eb33McbK2DtlxOXJ, jvhIPiizluur, 3d7sNusuu0, H9oITRk36noQkh)

I convert the List to an Array at the very end because I’m using this code with the JavaFX ListView, which only knows about arrays.