Is there functionality to generate a random character in Java?

Question

Does Java have any functionality to generate random characters or strings? Or must one simply pick a random integer and convert that integer\'s ascii code to a character?

Answer 1

This is a simple but useful discovery. It defines a class named RandomCharacter with 5 overloaded methods to get a certain type of character randomly. You can use these methods in your future projects.

    public class RandomCharacter {
    /** Generate a random character between ch1 and ch2 */
    public static char getRandomCharacter(char ch1, char ch2) {
        return (char) (ch1 + Math.random() * (ch2 - ch1 + 1));
    }

    /** Generate a random lowercase letter */
    public static char getRandomLowerCaseLetter() {
        return getRandomCharacter('a', 'z');
    }

    /** Generate a random uppercase letter */
    public static char getRandomUpperCaseLetter() {
        return getRandomCharacter('A', 'Z');
    }

    /** Generate a random digit character */
    public static char getRandomDigitCharacter() {
        return getRandomCharacter('0', '9');
    }

    /** Generate a random character */
    public static char getRandomCharacter() {
        return getRandomCharacter('\u0000', '\uFFFF');
    }
}

To demonstrate how it works let's have a look at the following test program displaying 175 random lowercase letters.

public class TestRandomCharacter {
    /** Main method */
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        final int NUMBER_OF_CHARS = 175;
        final int CHARS_PER_LINE = 25;
        // Print random characters between 'a' and 'z', 25 chars per line
        for (int i = 0; i < NUMBER_OF_CHARS; i++) {
            char ch = RandomCharacter.getRandomLowerCaseLetter();
            if ((i + 1) % CHARS_PER_LINE == 0)
                System.out.println(ch);
            else
                System.out.print(ch);
        }
    }
}

and the output is:

if you run one more time again:

I am giving credit to Y.Daniel Liang for his book Introduction to Java Programming, Comprehensive Version, 10th Edition, where I cited this knowledge from and use in my projects.

Note: If you are unfamiliar with overloaded methhods, in a nutshell Method Overloading is a feature that allows a class to have more than one method having the same name, if their argument lists are different.