note 26931 added to function.mt-rand

An answer to demogracia: Your first function "simpleRandString" is perfect, but the second function "randString" has a flaw: since you use the random generator to go into one of the three cases, every case will be used 1/3 of the time. Since case 1 has less possibilites than the others (10 vs. 26 and 26), the output can be more easily guessed: numbers will appear more often than average. Here is the same function without this flaw: function randString($length=16) { $newstring=""; if($length>0) { while(strlen($newstring)<$length) { $randnum = mt_rand(0,61); if ($randnum < 10) {$newstring.=chr($randnum+48);} elseif ($randnum < 36) {$newstring.=chr($randnum+55);} else {$newstring.=chr($randnum+61);} } } return $newstring; } You can make it a bit faster by not relying on "strlen" for every pass: function randString($length=16) { $newstring=""; if($length>0) { while(strlen($newstring)<$length) { $randnum = mt_rand(0,61); if ($randnum < 10) {$newstring.=chr($randnum+48);} elseif ($randnum < 36) {$newstring.=chr($randnum+55);} else {$newstring.=chr($randnum+61);} } } return $newstring; } -- http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.mt-rand.php http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=edit+26931 http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+26931 http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=reject+26931