Question

I am trying to get a random 16 digit number in Lua. What I have written isn’t working out for me when logically it should. How does math.random work with exponents?

This is what I keep getting.

 > return math.random(10^15, 10^16)
 > -1637272360

Answer 1

If you want to have a 16 digit number, try generating them this way:

local fmt = "%d%07d%08d"
local random = math.random
local num = fmt:format(random(1, 9), random(0, 10^7), random(0, 10^8))

and then keep the variable num in string type. As a number, it converts the values to exponential form(because of the very large; in your case > 10^14; exponential value) or otherwise, you can store them as a(n) Hex string?