Ever needed a seed to generate random passwords or keys? Here’s an easy way to generate a few different variations of random characters directly in bash!
# bash generate random 32 character alphanumeric string (upper and lowercase)
NEW_UUID=$(cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | fold -w 32 | head -n 1)# bash generate random 32 character alphanumeric string (lowercase only)
cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | fold -w 32 | head -n 1# Random numbers in a range, more randomly distributed than $RANDOM which is not
very random in terms of distribution of numbers.
# bash generate random number between 0 and 9
cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc '0-9' | fold -w 256 | head -n 1 | head --bytes 1# bash generate random number between 0 and 99
NUMBER=$(cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc '0-9' | fold -w 256 | head -n 1 | sed -e 's/^0*//' | head --bytes 2)
if [ "$NUMBER" == "" ]; then
NUMBER=0
fi# bash generate random number between 0 and 999
NUMBER=$(cat /dev/urandom | tr -dc '0-9' | fold -w 256 | head -n 1 | sed -e 's/^0*//' | head --bytes 3)
if [ "$NUMBER" == "" ]; then
NUMBER=0
fi