Problems with random numbers...

[Pheonix]

What should this code generate? My guess, 50 random numbers all between two fairly large numbers.

PHP: Select all

<ol><?php

for($x=0;$x<100;$x++)

{

echo '<li>'.mt_rand(48711122,2435556100).'</li>';

}

?></ol>

Actual Result? A little bit stranger...

HTML: Select all

<ol><li>-1399182791</li><li>-41036583</li><li>-1252920765</li><li>-526451647</li><li>-332961694</li><li>-1833380612</li><li>-1159768753</li><li>-1813882781</li><li>-1550466255</li><li>-68989001</li><li>-1659861049</li><li>-441480022</li><li>-183657088</li><li>-1277516243</li><li>-667125714</li>...

Okay... so... what now? I need a random generator to be able to handle numbers this large, I would simply times them all by -1, however some times it actually throws out a positive number, now I could come up with a way around that, but i'm sure there is a "proper" way to do this... right?

[Ryan Fait]

It's because the second mt_rand variable is too large by one number. You can do something like this:

PHP: Select all

<?php
$rand = mt_rand(487,243).mt_rand(11122,5556100);
?>

[Pheonix]

Yeah I found a better way of doing it
$x * rand(1,50) instead of rand($x,$x*50)
But its kinda strange that the max number isn't mentioned anywhere in the documentation for php

[dannyboy26]

I've always found I get much better results with mt_rand() than with rand(), e.g. with things like sudoku generators.