random_id: Cryptographically generated random identifiers

In ids: Generate Random Identifiers

Description

Random identifiers. By default this uses the openssl package to produce a random set of bytes, and expresses that as a hex character string. This does not affect R's random number stream.

Usage

random_id(n = 1, bytes = 16, use_openssl = TRUE)

Arguments

n	number of ids to return. If NULL, it instead returns the generating function
bytes	The number of bytes to include for each identifier. The length of the returned identifiers will be twice this long with each pair of characters representing a single byte.
use_openssl	A logical, indicating if we should use the openssl for generating the random identifiers. The openssl random bytestream is not affected by the state of the R random number generator (e.g., via set.seed) so may not be suitable for use where reproducibility is important. The speed should be very similar for both approaches.

Author(s)

Rich FitzJohn

Examples

# Generate a random id:
random_id()

# Generate 10 of them!
random_id(10)

# Different length ids
random_id(bytes = 8)
# (note that the number of characters is twice the number of bytes)

# The ids are not affected by R's RNG state:
set.seed(1)
(id1 <- random_id())
set.seed(1)
(id2 <- random_id())
# The generated identifiers are different, despite the seed being the same:
id1 == id2

# If you need these identifiers to be reproducible, pass use_openssl = FALSE
set.seed(1)
(id1 <- random_id(use_openssl = FALSE))
set.seed(1)
(id2 <- random_id(use_openssl = FALSE))
# This time they are the same:
id1 == id2

# Pass \code{n = NULL} to generate a function that binds your arguments:
id8 <- random_id(NULL, bytes = 8)
id8(10)

ids documentation built on May 2, 2019, 2:08 a.m.