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I need to use a long text as sample. Afterwards with an algorithm I will take a substring of it whose length is fixed (passed as parameter), but the startIndex is random, therefore each time it should take a different portion of that text.

However I would take, if possible, a standard text as sample for my application. Looking in internet it is almost always used the Lorem Ipsum text.

Can this be considered "standard" or is there a rela standard one? Thanks

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  • I don't quite get it - is it for production code or are looking for test data and test cases?
    – Andreas Dolk
    Jul 4, 2011 at 9:25
  • It will be used in a development environment, where, by the way, no client data can be hosted. Therefore my anonymisation algorithm would "mask" all sensible data in the DB that will be later moved to such environment. My goal was to find a standard text/solution for that.
    – Francesco
    Jul 4, 2011 at 9:37

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Lorem Ipsum is normally used for dummy text when typesetting because it contains words but do not as such have any meaning. If it will do for you, then great.

I do not believe there is a standard text for sample text. I suggest you consider downloading a tome in plain text format from Project Gutenberg - http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page - and use it instead. Shakespearean plays might be good candidates.

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  • Thanks Thorbjorn for the hint. The text will be used to anonymised sensible data fields (e.g. customer's background description). The goal of my algorithm would be to take a random portion of the sample text with the same length of the target field. It has no need to have any meaning. My only concern was to take a standard solution, of course if existing.
    – Francesco
    Jul 4, 2011 at 9:20
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There's no standard text that can be used to as a proxy for all kind of textual input or output data.

You should look at your requirements and use cases and analyze the type of text that is displayed. Look at the language, is it formatted (bold, italics, different fonts - you didn't tell about that), do you expect numbers or formulas, is it one or multiple paragraphs. Then find or write a sample text that is as close as possible to the expected input.

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