Random Numbers in Perl

[Kevin Buettner]

On Oct 22, 11:53pm, Nathan Saper wrote:

> Here's one for you Perl gurus out there:
> 
> In a Perl app I'm trying to write, I want to be able to create random
> hex integers $bits bits long, where $bits is a user-defined variable.
> The randomness of the numbers needs to be as good as possible, because
> it would be used in a crypto app.
> 
> Any ideas?

If you're on linux, query /dev/random and use however many bits you need.

This isn't exactly portable, but I doubt that you'll find a portable
way to obtain cryptographically strong random numbers.

Kevin