I'll start off by acknowledging that this is an odd question with a very limited scope of usage.

I've got a string, say, $_ = 'My name is Bob.'; I have an array @obs = (a..z);. I have a percentage $percentage='50%'. I want to obscure $percentage of $_ with characters from @obs in a uniform manner in that if I do it thirty times to the same string with the same percentage, I'll always get the same results. (By obscure I mean to substitute a (random) character with a random character from @obs).

My initial reaction to the problem was to use srand with a predetermined value, break up the string, pick quasirandomly which positions of the array to replace, pick a quasirandom value to replace it with, make the switch, then join the array back together. That just seems like a really clumsy manner with which to proceed, and including $percentage with such a short string made for some messy math.

I don't want to pollute other rand calls by defining srand, and all in all I think my process is clumsy at best. Any insight on how I might streamline this in a more efficient manner would be appreciated.

In reply to Obscuring a String by Anonymous Monk

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