MakerandSection: User Contributed Perl Documentation (3)Updated: 2004-10-19 |
NAME
Crypt::Makerand - Perl extension for the truerand librarySYNOPSIS
use Crypt::Makerand; $rand = Crypt::Makerand::trand32();
DESCRIPTION
Uses the truerand library to generate a random 32 bit number.The basic idea here is that between clock ``skew'' and various hard-to-predict OS event arrivals, counting a tight loop will yield a little (maybe a third of a bit or so) of ``good'' randomness per interval clock tick. This seems to work well even on unloaded machines. If there is a human operator at the machine, you should augment truerand with other measure, like keyboard event timing.
On server machines (e.g., when you need to generate a Diffie-Hellman secret) truerand alone may be good enough.
Exportable functions
unsigned long trand32(void)
AUTHOR
The truerand library was developed by Matt Blaze, Jim Reeds, and Jack Lacy. Copyright (c) 1992, 1994 AT&T. This Perl extension was created by Mark Cox, mjc@redhat.com, March 2001.SEE ALSO
perl(1).