A random string generator in a bash script isn't respecting the number of given characters

Question

I am trying to build a random character generator in a bash script on osx 10.8.5 . The goal is to generate random character strings for a script generating salts for the wor

Answer 1

I see two problems in your script.

I'm pretty sure

take=$(($RANDOM % 88));

should be

take=$(($RANDOM % 87));

Otherwise, it appears you're going past the end of your input stream.

The other problem is this char: \§

Bash is seeing that as two characters (wide char?). I'd delete it from your possibilities.

Of course, that would mean the above line would be:

take=$(($RANDOM % 86));

Doing those two things, in fact, works for me.

Edited:

@that other guy has a better answer. Adding the space rather than reducing the modulo will ensure that you get every character