Re: [RFC] Random Extension 3.0

On Sat, Sep 4, 2021 at 10:57 PM Marc <marc@mabe.berlin> wrote: > > On 9/2/21 5:10 PM, Go Kudo wrote: > > Hi Internals. > > > > Expanded from the previous RFC and changed it to an RFC that organizes > the > > whole PHP random number generator. Also, the target version has been > > changed to 8.2. > > > > https://wiki.php.net/rfc/rng_extension > > https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/7453 > > > > Hopefully you will get some good responses. > > For me (user land developer with no voting power) your RFC looks pretty :) > > Beside the abstract vs interface question I have some other notes: > > On the one hand you define "getBytes()" which returns a string and on > the other hand you define "shuffleString()" - is the first one a binary > string and the other a charset dependent string? I guess here > "shuffleString()" works on byte level and so it should be "shuffleBytes()". > > Why are there no default values for min/max on "getInt()" - It seems > unnecessary to me to pass min/max arguments if you are just interested > in a random integer or passing max as well if you are interested in a > positive integer only. > Because the default range is not obvious. For example mt_rand() without min/max will actually return only non-negative integers, so someone might expect $random->getInt() to do the same, even though it makes very little sense. $random->getInt($n) could be interpreted either as a number in $n..PHP_INT_MAX (if we just see it as leaving $max at the default value), or 0..$n-1 (a very common convention for single-argument random integer functions). Requiring both arguments makes the meaning unambiguous. Regards, Nikita