Random Data Generation

Strictly not for use in statistical analysis. Non-reproducible and with unknown statistical properties. Provides an alternative source of randomness from the Mbed TLS library for purposes such as cryptographic key generation. Mbed TLS uses a block-cipher in counter mode operation, as defined in NIST SP800-90A: Recommendation for Random Number Generation Using Deterministic Random Bit Generators. The implementation uses AES-256 as the underlying block cipher, with a derivation function, and an entropy collector combining entropy from multiple sources including at least one strong entropy source.

Usage

random(n = 1L, convert = TRUE)

Arguments

n

[default 1L] integer random bytes to generate (from 0 to 1024), coerced to integer if required. If a vector, the first element is taken.

convert

[default TRUE] logical FALSE to return a raw vector, or TRUE to return the hex representation of the bytes as a character string.

Value

A length ‘n’ raw vector, or length one vector of ‘2n’ random characters, depending on the value of ‘convert’ supplied.

Note

Results obtained are independent of and do not alter the state of R's own pseudo-random number generators.

Examples

random()
#> [1] "3f"
random(8L)
#> [1] "23e2a4c5bcbb89c0"
random(n = 8L, convert = FALSE)
#> [1] f3 85 f4 d8 66 67 f4 54