Question

Does any one know which of the two choices for random number generation is going to produce a better randomness:

<?php
$array = array(1,2,3,4,5,6);

shuffle($array);
echo $array[0];

//// OR ////

echo rand(1,6);

?>

Or perhaps theres an even better option I am unaware of?

Answer 1

Both use the same PRNG so their randomness is equally good/bad. Obviously a plain rand(1,6) is faster since it’s just the math and not both the math and the array stuff. Besides that, you’d use array_rand() if you wanted a random element from an array.

PHP also has the mersenne twister (mt_rand()) which is “better” but unsuitable for cryptography (probably not relevant in your case).

If you need true randomness you could consider reading from /dev/random – but that read may block if there’s no randomness available. You could also use a hardware device that gives you even better randomness based on some physical effect.