Generate random bytes from the platform-specific cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generator

Source: R/rbyte.R

Generate random bytes from the platform-specific cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generator

rbyte(n, type = "chr")

Arguments

n

Number of random bytes to generate. Note: if the entropy pool is exhausted on your system it may not be able to provide the requested number of bytes - in this case an error is thrown.

type

Type of returned values - 'raw' or "chr". Default: "chr".

Value

A raw vector or a hexadecimal string

Platform notes

The method used for generating random values varies depending on the operating system (OS):

  • For macOS and BSDs: arc4random_buf()

  • For linux: syscall(SYS_getrandom())

  • For win32: BCryptGenRandom()

All these random number generators are internally seeded by the OS using entropy gathered from multiple sources and are considered cryptographically secure.

Examples

rbyte(16, type = "chr")
#> [1] "04cadb8d7ecf2c959bde2c3440ead4ce"
rbyte(16, type = 'raw')
#>  [1] 10 65 f2 5c 9f cd 9b c6 9d 59 59 4a 9f 23 c2 c5