4 ms·

If you're set on using arc4random it's no big deal to use ctypes to invoke it from Python. Bash is quick to bang out but it's funny how your parent needs to co

• arh68 12y ago
  Yes thanks for pointing that out, I wrote a slightly faster version below. I took your advice and wanted just a single invoke on the C program, so I modified it to take an argument. I'm satisfied! > cat arc4random-v2.c #include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> int main(int argc, char** argv) { if ( ! (argc == 1 || argc == 2) ) { printf("usage: %s [n_output]\n", argv[0]); } else { int n_iter = (argc == 2) ? atoi(argv[1]) : 1; for (int i = 0; i < n_iter; i++) { printf("%u\n", arc4random()); } } return 0; } > ./arc4random 3 4282823399 333796506 762478899 > cat pwgen-v2.sh #!/usr/bin/env bash dict=/usr/share/dict/words n=4 # of words to include in passphrase nl=$(wc -l $dict | sed 's_[ \t]*\([0-9]*\).*_\1_') fmt_flag() { echo $[$1 % $nl] | sed -n -e 's_^_-e _' -e 's_$_p_p' ; } flags=$(./arc4random $n | while read -r i; do fmt_flag "$i"; done) words=$(sed -n $flags < $dict) echo $words > time ./pwgen.sh liparite evade retiringly spacious real 0m0.268s user 0m0.251s sys 0m0.015s > time ./pwgen-v2.sh latherin prideling thumbscrew unraveled real 0m0.082s user 0m0.072s sys 0m0.013s EDIT: note that the single call to sed results in alphabetical/dictionary-dependent results... (!) oops