On 1/19/19 2:45 PM, Martijn Dekker wrote: > Op 16-01-19 om 02:21 schreef Quentin: >> If you really need some quality CSPRNG values, I'd suggest adding a >> $SECURE_RANDOM variable that just reads from /dev/urandom. > > IMHO, this would clearly be the correct approach. I don't know of any > 21st century Unix or Unix-like system that doesn't have /dev/urandom. I > would really like to see shells adopt this idea -- hopefully all with > the same variable name.
OK, this is a reasonable approach. Since /dev/urandom just generates random bytes, there's a lot of flexibility and we're not subject to any kind of backwards compatibility constraints, especially not the 16-bit limit. What do you think would be the best way to present that to a user? As a 32-bit random number? A character string you can use to create filenames? Some other form? Chet -- ``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU c...@case.edu http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/