Re: Random string generator

my @chars = ("A".."Z", "a".."z");
my $string;
$string .= $chars[rand @chars] for 1..8;
[download]

Fill @chars with what ever characters you want to be valid in your string.

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Re: Re: Random string generator by ibanix (Hermit) on Feb 06, 2003 at 02:06 UTC
This is really nifty. Paladin++ I have to spell this out; perhaps other monks will appreciate the explination. Please feel free to correct me. `rand @chars` takes @chars in scalar context, that is, the length of the array holding our characterset. So `rand` returns a value somewhere in the array, and that becomes the index for the array lookup. I keep forgetting you can do cool things like this by implied scalar or array context. Thanks, ibanix `$ echo '$0 & $0 &' > foo; chmod a+x foo; foo;`	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Re: Re: Random string generator by bart (Canon) on Feb 06, 2003 at 11:29 UTC
Don't forget to add that using a floating point number as an array index, does an implied int on the value. In other words: it truncates towards zero. `$a[5.9]` is the same array element as `$a[5]`, not `$a[6]`. A very explicit version would have been: `$chars[int rand scalar @chars]` [download] which does exactly the same thing as `$chars[rand @chars]` [download] The net effect is that all array indexes have the same change of being chosen.	[reply] [d/l] [select]