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Get a long random string from /dev/random

Use word count to make sure you’re getting the length you expected.

cat /dev/urandom| tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9-!@#$%^&*()+{}|:<>?=' | fold -w 1048 | head -n1 | wc -m
And use this to actually fetch the long string.
cat /dev/urandom| tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9-!@#$%^&*()+{}|:<>?=' | fold -w 1048 | head -n1 | wc -m
Here’s a much simpler example, in case you just want a quick four digit number:
cat /dev/urandom| tr -dc ’0-9′ | fold -w 4 | head -n1

This was written by Edward Delaporte. Posted on Friday, April 16, 2010, at April 16. Filed under Example Code, Solutions. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.