3.2 rand -- An interface to the OpenSSL pseudo random number generator

3.2 `rand` -- An interface to the OpenSSL pseudo random number generator

This module handles the OpenSSL pseudo random number generator (PRNG) and declares the following:

add(string, entropy): Mix bytes from string into the PRNG state. The entropy argument is (the lower bound of) an estimate of how much randomness is contained in string, measured in bytes. For more information, see e.g. RFC 1750.

bytes(num_bytes): Get some random bytes from the PRNG as a string.
This is a wrapper for the C function RAND_bytes.

cleanup(): Erase the memory used by the PRNG.
This is a wrapper for the C function RAND_cleanup.

egd(path[, bytes]): Query the Entropy Gathering Daemon² on socket path for bytes bytes of random data and and uses add to seed the PRNG. The default value of bytes is 255.

load_file(path[, bytes]): Read bytes bytes (or all of it, if bytes is negative) of data from the file path to seed the PRNG. The default value of bytes is -1.

screen(): Add the current contents of the screen to the PRNG state. Availability: Windows.

seed(string): This is equivalent to calling add with entropy as the length of the string.

status(): Returns true if the PRNG has been seeded with enough data, and false otherwise.

write_file(path): Write a number of random bytes (currently 1024) to the file path. This file can then be used with load_file to seed the PRNG again.

exception Error: If the current RAND method supports any errors, this is raised when needed. The default method does not raise this when the entropy pool is depleted.
Whenever this exception is raised directly, it has a list of error messages from the OpenSSL error queue, where each item is a tuple (lib, function, reason). Here lib, function and reason are all strings, describing where and what the problem is. See err(3) for more information.