seems to me that removing "u" won't actually solve the problem very well, but removing all vowels should do the trick. then again, if your users are particularly sensitive, they may be bothered by "fck" on its own.

Hadn't thought of the profanity thing. I guess that could be an issue, and a little surprising for a shopper.

I changed the code in my post above to:

@seed=qw(b c d f g h j k l m n p q r s t v w x y z 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9);

to keep the ids "clean". . .
The number of unique ids with this array is now (29^8) or around a half a trillion. Good enough!

Good point.

-Lee

"To be civilized is to deny one's nature."