On Mon, Oct 17, 2016 at 04:56:05PM -0500, Eric Blake wrote: > You're not the first person to complain that $RANDOM is a bashism, and > this is not the first time we've had to retort that our use of $RANDOM > is a nicety, but not a necessity, and that the code is perfectly safe > and tested on shells where the expansion of $RANDOM is the empty string.
I can see why it would surprise people, so maybe it would be helpful to add a comment mentioning that the code is still safe when $RANDOM is not useful, and perhaps pointing to this discussion.
