Use a String as a Seed for a Randomiser

Question

It is possible to use a string as a randomiser seed to generate a number between two values in PHP.

For example:

$seed = 'John';

srand($seed);

echo rand(1, 10);

then I think you can use https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.gmp-random-seed.php — Jerson, Sep 03 '21 at 07:31
You can go over the string char for char and convert that to an integer (i.e. with [ord()](https://www.php.net/manual/de/function.ord.php)) — 29thDay, Sep 03 '21 at 07:33
https://stackoverflow.com/a/5477196/2943403, https://stackoverflow.com/a/37058319/2943403, — mickmackusa, Sep 03 '21 at 07:51

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 03 '21 at 07:33

You can calculate the hash of the input string to get an integer (with crc32() in example) and then, use that number as seed :

<?php
$StringSeed = "John";
$IntSeed = crc32($StringSeed);

echo "Hash Value : $IntSeed" . PHP_EOL;

srand($IntSeed);

echo rand(1, 10); // 8
echo rand(1, 10); // 4
echo rand(1, 10); // 10

Try it yourself

Use a String as a Seed for a Randomiser

1 Answers1