About randomity, entropy, random passwords - was Re: Noob dumb question (extending emacs)

[Jean Louis]

* Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor 
<help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org> [2021-10-25 22:53]:
> Emanuel Berg via Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor wrote:
> 
> >> (defun rcd-read-urandom (&optional length)
> >>   "I am also free to modify the Emacs Lisp unlimited times."
> >>   (shell-command-to-string "head -n 1 /dev/urandom"))
> >
> > So you had one as well ...

> > Check how head does it then ... that's how to get aHEAD in
> > software piracy ...
> 
> Wait ... didn't we see it with pwgen?
> 
> You need to write a dynamic module, in C for this.
> 
> /dev/random isn't a regular file ... no can do.

I was just testing it, I did not use /dev/urandm ever. It can be done,
but that is slow and not portable.

This seem to work blazing fast and is portable enough, I expect it to
work on any GNU Emacs version.

(defun rcd-random-md5-string ()
  (md5 (concat (emacs-uptime) (format-time-string "%N %6N %3N"))))

(rcd-random-md5-string) ⇒ "5ae0b5bd4f7bd84a877062b104a8f77f"


-- 
Jean

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