topic Re: Random alphanumeric? in Operating System - HP-UX

Random alphanumeric?

Chua Wen Ching — Sat, 12 Oct 2002 14:38:39 GMT

I am using HP-UX 10.20. I use echo $RANDOM to random generate numbers. But if i want to random generate alphabets or alphanumeric (ex: 2 characters). Can is still use $RANDOM???

Re: Random alphanumeric?

harry d brown jr — Sat, 12 Oct 2002 15:29:32 GMT

echo `expr $RANDOM % 26` `expr $RANDOM % 26` | awk '{alphabet = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"; printf("%s%s\n", substr(alphabet,$1,1), substr(alphabet,$2,1)); }'

live free or die
harry

Re: Random alphanumeric?

Chua Wen Ching — Sun, 13 Oct 2002 04:10:52 GMT

The above code is used to random generate alphabets. Is there any way to random generate alphanumerics? Thank you.

Re: Random alphanumeric?

Pete Randall — Sun, 13 Oct 2002 11:56:00 GMT

I'm sure there's a better way but a crude method would be to combine Harry's alphabetic code with "echo ${RANDOM}".

Pete

Re: Random alphanumeric?

harry d brown jr — Sun, 13 Oct 2002 11:59:22 GMT

Sure, and I'll include upper/lower case:

echo `expr $RANDOM % 62` `expr $RANDOM % 62` | awk '{alphabet = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"; printf("%s%s\n", substr(alphabet,$1,1), substr(alphabet,$2,1)); }'

live free or die
harry

Re: Random alphanumeric?

Pete Randall — Sun, 13 Oct 2002 12:12:01 GMT

And that's much more elegant than anything I could have come up with - nice one, Harry!

Pete

Re: Random alphanumeric?

Chua Wen Ching — Sun, 13 Oct 2002 15:44:31 GMT

Thanks a lot. It really help a lot.

Re: Random alphanumeric?

H.Merijn Brand (procura — Sun, 13 Oct 2002 16:35:14 GMT

Much too complicated :)

Only able to reply now. This morning I was redirected to the US :(

PC03:/W 501 $ perl -le 'print +("A".."Z",0..9,"a".."z")[int rand 62]'
J
PC03:/W 502 $ perl -le 'print +("A".."Z",0..9,"a".."z")[int rand 62]'
U
PC03:/W 503 $ perl -le 'print +("A".."Z",0..9,"a".."z")[int rand 62]'
X
PC03:/W 504 $ perl -le 'print +("A".."Z",0..9,"a".."z")[int rand 62]'
U
PC03:/W 505 $ perl -le 'print +("A".."Z",0..9,"a".."z")[int rand 62]'
9
PC03:/W 506 $ perl -le 'print +("A".."Z",0..9,"a".."z")[int rand 62]'
6
PC03:/W 507 $ perl -le 'print +("A".."Z",0..9,"a".."z")[int rand 62]'
D
PC03:/W 508 $

Re: Random alphanumeric?

harry d brown jr — Sun, 13 Oct 2002 18:59:47 GMT

procura,

I agree that I'd personally do this in perl and not a shell. perl rules and shells smell!

live free or die
harry

Re: Random alphanumeric?

Chua Wen Ching — Sun, 13 Oct 2002 23:00:18 GMT

Dear procura, thank you for your code. But i think my org unix is using an old perl interpreter. When i perl -v, it display perl version 4.0. I always trys your perl code, but it never works. I only see 5 everytime i execute your code. Is perl really that powerful? Any good tutorial on perl? Thank you.

Re: Random alphanumeric?

harry d brown jr — Sun, 13 Oct 2002 23:18:58 GMT

Chua Wen,

Perl is VERY powerful and faster than shell's.

Get a newer version here:
http://hpux.cs.utah.edu/hppd/hpux/Languages/perl-5.8.0/

live free or die
harry

Re: Random alphanumeric?

Chua Wen Ching — Sun, 13 Oct 2002 23:37:01 GMT

I think the link is not working. It displays cannot find server. Is there any tutorial on perl? Can i code perl on any platform maybe Windows, Linux, Unix, mac, etc.

Re: Random alphanumeric?

H.Merijn Brand (procura — Mon, 14 Oct 2002 05:02:22 GMT

You were running 10.20, right? Get my 10.20 port from https://www.beepz.com/personal/merijn

And - yes - it is *very* worthwhile learning perl. Perl comes with extensive on-line documentation, but the O'Reilly books "Learning Perl" and "Programming Perl 3rd ed" are a very good resource.

Online help can be found on http://www.perlmonks.org and the docs will be available on http://www.perldoc.com/ and the FAQ's on http://perlfaq.cpan.org/

Have FUN!

Re: Random alphanumeric?

H.Merijn Brand (procura — Mon, 14 Oct 2002 05:08:45 GMT

perl will run on virtually *any* platform :)

for win32 (no cygwin) you could try ActivePerl from http://www.activestate.com

If you however want to make real use of a win32 box, install cygwin from http://www.cygwin.com which includes both perl5.6.1 and 5.8.0 (and a full X11 client and server environment)

For Linux there is a welth of ports available.

Mac-OS is fully supported, but you'd have to go start digging youself for that from http://www.cpan.org because I have no Mac. The ports available from ftp://download.xs4all.nl/pub/mirror/CPAN/ports/ are not always the most recent. Ongoing searches migh give you better versions.

Re: Random alphanumeric?

Chua Wen Ching — Mon, 14 Oct 2002 09:07:52 GMT

Thank you procura.