This is part 1 of a 2 part question. Part 2 here.

I'm wanting to know more about sorting algorithms so I need to create 4 text files with the same data sorted differently to run my algorithms against:

• Randomly sorted data (I'm going to use Knuth shuffle)
• Reversed data
• Nearly sorted (not sure how to implement this)
• Few unique (not sure how to approach this)

Which approach is best to generate a nearly sorted list on predefined data?