random entry generating.

[tar565]

I am writing into a db and have to create a unique random value for each entry. The value can be made up of any number of digits, chars or letters.

Any help would be great.

 

[PaulTEG]

Can you give us more information, is it a web application, are you using session variables, are you running this on *nix, Windows etc etc

Depending on your situation, there are a number of variables you can use to create faceted codes,(time, process id, session key(random)) which could then be passed to a function to create a totally random id.

What's your need for randomness?

--paul

cigless ...

 

[tar565]

I am running this on windows. I am writing into a MYSQL db. I have not designed the db and cannot change it.

Basically I am writing a line into a table called emails and I need to generate a unique id for each line consisting of chars, digits and letters.

 

[PaulTEG]

What's the need for randomness, an autoincremental index would sort this out for you?
--Paul

cigless ...

 

[stevexff]

Sounds like you need a GUID. Or a UUID. Googling 'perl guid' turns up module Data::UUID which generates 128-bit UUIDs in a number of formats. This will give you a string that looks similar to

4162F712-1DD2-11B2-B17E-C09EFE1DC403

Haven't tried it, but most other systems (.NET, Java) use them so they should be OK for your purposes.

Allegedly they are guaranteed to be unique until the year 3400, by which time you will probably have rolled off the project...