我喜欢这个技巧:

echo ${RANDOM:0:1} # random number between 1 and 9
echo ${RANDOM:0:2} # random number between 1 and 99

...

想使用不带dd和od的/dev/urandom

function roll() { local modulus=${1:-6}; echo $(( 1 + 0x$(env LC_CTYPE=C tr -dc '0-9a-fA-F' < /dev/urandom | head -c5 ) % $modulus )); }

测试

$ roll
5
$ roll 12
12

它有多随机?

$ (echo "count roll percentage"; i=0; while [ $i -lt 10000 ]; do roll; i=$((i+1)); done | sort | uniq -c | awk '{print $0,($1/10000*100)"%"}') | column -t
count  roll  percentage
1625   1     16.25%
1665   2     16.65%
1646   3     16.46%
1720   4     17.2%
1694   5     16.94%
1650   6     16.5%

还可以使用shuf(可在coreutils中使用)。

shuf -i 1-100000 -n 1

我就此写了几篇文章。

https://linuxconfig.org/generating-random-numbers-in-bash-with-examples https://linuxconfig.org/random-entropy-in-bash https://www.cloudsavvyit.com/7572/how-to-generate-better-random-numbers-at-the-bash-command-line/

$ RANDOM=$(date +%s%N | cut -b10-19)
$ echo $(( $RANDOM % 113 + 13 ))

上述将给出一个介于13到125(113-1+13)之间的数字，具有合理的随机熵。

我已经采取了一些这些想法，并做出了一个函数，应该执行迅速，如果大量的随机数是必需的。

如果你需要很多随机数，调用od的代价是很高的。相反，我只调用它一次，并存储来自/dev/urandom的1024个随机数。当调用rand时，返回最后一个随机数并按比例缩放。然后从缓存中删除它。当缓存为空时，再读取1024个随机数。

例子:

rand 10; echo $RET

返回RET中0到9(含9)之间的随机数。

declare -ia RANDCACHE
declare -i RET RAWRAND=$(( (1<<32)-1 ))

function rand(){  # pick a random number from 0 to N-1. Max N is 2^32
  local -i N=$1
  [[ ${#RANDCACHE[*]} -eq 0 ]] && { RANDCACHE=( $(od -An -tu4 -N1024 /dev/urandom) ); }  # refill cache
  RET=$(( (RANDCACHE[-1]*N+1)/RAWRAND ))  # pull last random number and scale
  unset RANDCACHE[${#RANDCACHE[*]}-1]     # pop read random number
};

# test by generating a lot of random numbers, then effectively place them in bins and count how many are in each bin.

declare -i c; declare -ia BIN

for (( c=0; c<100000; c++ )); do
  rand 10
  BIN[RET]+=1  # add to bin to check distribution
done

for (( c=0; c<10; c++ )); do
  printf "%d %d\n" $c ${BIN[c]} 
done

更新:这并不适用于所有n。如果使用小n，也会浪费随机比特。注意(在这种情况下)一个32位随机数有足够的熵容纳9个0到9之间的随机数(10*9=1,000,000,000 <= 2*32)，我们可以从每个32个随机源值中提取多个随机数。

#!/bin/bash

declare -ia RCACHE

declare -i RET             # return value
declare -i ENT=2           # keep track of unused entropy as 2^(entropy)
declare -i RND=RANDOM%ENT  # a store for unused entropy - start with 1 bit

declare -i BYTES=4         # size of unsigned random bytes returned by od
declare -i BITS=8*BYTES    # size of random data returned by od in bits
declare -i CACHE=16        # number of random numbers to cache
declare -i MAX=2**BITS     # quantum of entropy per cached random number
declare -i c

function rand(){  # pick a random number from 0 to 2^BITS-1
  [[ ${#RCACHE[*]} -eq 0 ]] && { RCACHE=( $(od -An -tu$BYTES -N$CACHE /dev/urandom) ); }  # refill cache - could use /dev/random if CACHE is small
  RET=${RCACHE[-1]}              # pull last random number and scale
  unset RCACHE[${#RCACHE[*]}-1]  # pop read random number
};

function randBetween(){
  local -i N=$1
  [[ ENT -lt N ]] && {  # not enough entropy to supply ln(N)/ln(2) bits
    rand; RND=RET       # get more random bits
    ENT=MAX             # reset entropy
  }
  RET=RND%N  # random number to return
  RND=RND/N  # remaining randomness
  ENT=ENT/N  # remaining entropy
};

declare -ia BIN

for (( c=0; c<100000; c++ )); do
  randBetween 10
  BIN[RET]+=1
done

for c in ${BIN[*]}; do
  echo $c
done

0到9之间的随机数。

echo $((RANDOM%10))