Sean McAllister <smcallis@xxxxxxxxxx> writes: >> Sean McAllister <smcallis@xxxxxxxxxx> writes: >> >> > +# generate a random 12 digit string >> > +gen_nonce() { >> > + test_copy_bytes 12 < /dev/urandom | tr -dc A-Za-z0-9 >> > +} >> >> What is the randomness requirement of this application? IOW, what >> breaks if we just change this to "echo 0123456789ab"? >> >> Or "date | git hash-object --stdin" for that matter? >> >> We'd want to make our tests more predictiable, not less. > > The randomness requirement is just that I need nonces to be unique > during a single run of the HTTP server > as they uniquefy the files I put on disk to make the HTTP hack-ily > stateful. I'd be fine with your date/hash-object > solution, but I don't know that it will help make the tests more predictable. If so, would something like this be global_counter_for_nonce=0 gen_nonce () { global_counter_for_nonce=$(( global_counter_for_nonce + 1 )) && echo "$global_counter_for_nonce" } more appropriate? It is utterly predictable and yields the same answer only once during a single run.