Question

Is there any Go function which returns true pseudo random number in every run? What I actually mean is, consider following code,

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "rand"
)

func main() {
    fmt.Println(rand.Int31n(100))
}

Every time I execute this code, I get the same output. Is there a method that will return different, random results each time that it is called?

Answer 1

The package rand can be used to generate pseudo random numbers, which are generated based on a specific initial value (called “seed”).

A popular choice for this initial seed is for example the current time in nanoseconds – a value which will probably differ when you execute your program multiple times. You can initialize the random generator with the current time with something like this:

rand.Seed(time.Now().UnixNano())

(don’t forget to import the time package for that)

There is also another package called crypto/rand which can be used to generate better random values (this generator might also take the user’s mouse movements, the current heat of the processor and a lot of other factors into account). However, the functions in this package are several times slower and, unless you don’t write a pass-phrase generator (or other security related stuff), the normal rand package is probably fine.