best way to generate a random string?

[fris]

looking to create a string like on pastebin for the entries.

whats the best way to go about this?

current way im doing is using uniqid with some other jazz

function short_name( $post_name ) {
                global $wpdb, $post;
                if ( !is_object( $post ) )
                        return $post_name;
                $num    = (int) $post->ID;
                $pasteid = md5(uniqid($num, true));
                $slug = dechex(crc32($pasteid));
                return $slug;
 }

[k0nr4d]

nothign wrong with md5(uniqid());
You can maybe use microtime too

[PowerCum]

Compile your apache with mod unique_id and let the web server care about it for you.
On high traffic servers the performance impact is almost nothing. Your solution is considerably slower than apache inique_id and will consume quite more CPU.
Other than that, it's an ok solution.

[fris]

Originally Posted by PowerCum

Compile your apache with mod unique_id and let the web server care about it for you.
On high traffic servers the performance impact is almost nothing. Your solution is considerably slower than apache inique_id and will consume quite more CPU.
Other than that, it's an ok solution.

ya im only running this at the time of creating a post. so other than that its not used anywhere else.

I thik i have that module installed for expiring links.

[grumpy]

or you can just take a sessionid