Question

In this tutorial in the part of Daily inspirations he says:

$quote = array(
1 => "Quote 1",
2 => "Quote 2",
3 => "Quote 3",
4 => "Quote 4",
5 => "Quote 5",
);
srand ((double) microtime() * 1000000);
$randnum = rand(1,5);
echo"$quote[$randnum]";

I do not understand what he is doing (literally) here:

srand ((double) microtime() * 1000000);

Could you please help me understand what this does?

I know srand() is to:

Seed the random number generator

But why does he do this, what’s the point of it?

By the way: I would have gone with something like this:

<?php

$quotes = array(

"one",
"two",
"three"

);

echo $quotes[rand(0,count($quotes)-1)];
?>

Is there anything wrong with this?

Answer 1

Most random number generators aren’t actually random; the next number they generate is calculated using a simple-yet-large function from previous numbers that have been generated. Seeding the RNG gives it a “previous” number to work from, since many times they start from the same known state each time.