2 replies to this topic

[imported_Oppo]

I thought I would post how to generate a random number using Bash because it took me a while to find the information.

NUMBER=`echo $RANDOM%900 | bc`

Now you can use $NUMBER anywhere in your script and you should have a random number.

[asafe]

If I'm not wrong RANDOM is a shell variable. I think you use it directily:

NUMBER=$RANDOM  

Or

number=$((RANDOM % somenumber)) 

Edited by asafe, 03 August 2010 - 10:35 AM.

[Exit526]

I think the better way is to use /dev/urandom for this. Read random bits from the file. You can obtain large range. $RANDOM has only 0-32767. E.g.

cat /dev/urandom|od -N4 -An -i

See http://94.228.168.18...article_03.html for details.