ids: random_id – R documentation

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random_id

Cryptographically generated random identifiers

Description

Random identifiers. By default this uses the openssl package to produce a random set of bytes, and expresses that as a hex character string. This does not affect R's random number stream.

Usage

random_id(n = 1, bytes = 16, use_openssl = TRUE)

Arguments

`n`	number of ids to return. If `NULL`, it instead returns the generating function
`bytes`	The number of bytes to include for each identifier. The length of the returned identifiers will be twice this long with each pair of characters representing a single byte.
`use_openssl`	A logical, indicating if we should use the openssl for generating the random identifiers. The openssl random bytestream is not affected by the state of the R random number generator (e.g., via `set.seed`) so may not be suitable for use where reproducibility is important. The speed should be very similar for both approaches.

Author(s)

Rich FitzJohn

Examples

# Generate a random id:
random_id()

# Generate 10 of them!
random_id(10)

# Different length ids
random_id(bytes = 8)
# (note that the number of characters is twice the number of bytes)

# The ids are not affected by R's RNG state:
set.seed(1)
(id1 <- random_id())
set.seed(1)
(id2 <- random_id())
# The generated identifiers are different, despite the seed being the same:
id1 == id2

# If you need these identifiers to be reproducible, pass use_openssl = FALSE
set.seed(1)
(id1 <- random_id(use_openssl = FALSE))
set.seed(1)
(id2 <- random_id(use_openssl = FALSE))
# This time they are the same:
id1 == id2

# Pass \code{n = NULL} to generate a function that binds your arguments:
id8 <- random_id(NULL, bytes = 8)
id8(10)

ids

Generate Random Identifiers

v1.0.1

MIT + file LICENSE

Authors

Rich FitzJohn [aut, cre]

Initial release