I would like to generate numbers, letters, etc. randomly to a set character length.
I really suck at using repeat, and so far eveything I’ve tried hasn’t worked. So far I got:
generate()
on generate()
set the_list to {"a", "b", "c"}
set the list_count to the count of the_list
set pick to random number from 1 to list_count
set result to item pick of the_list as string
end generate
to pick randomly from the list.
Basically I want it to repeat until the length of the string is a certain amount of characters long, but I’m not sure how to go about it… repeat with i in x, repeat until count of x is 4, etc.
As a rule, you shouldn’t use single word variables like “result”. They may be key words.
generate(5)
on generate(n)
set the_list to {“a”, “b”, “c”}
set the list_count to the count the_list
set the_string to “”
repeat n times
set pick to random number from 1 to list_count
set the_result to item pick of the_list as string – result is reserved
set the_string to the_string & the_result
end repeat
return the_string
end generate
set the_list to {"a", "b", "cd", "de", "efg", "fgh", "ghij", "hijk"}
generate(3, the_list)
display dialog result
on generate(repNum, theItems)
set rep to true
set theResult to ""
repeat while rep is true
set the list_count to the count of theItems
set pick to random number from 1 to list_count
set theResult to theResult & item pick of theItems as string
if (count of theResult) ≥ repNum then
set theResult to characters 1 through repNum of theResult as string
return theResult
end if
end repeat
end generate
but if all strings in the list have 1 character, you can just do “repeat repNum” (with repNum being a variable representing the no. of characters) and it will repeat 3 times, and the character count of the result will be 3
hope this helps
Here’s a version that uses the ASCII character command to translate a randomly-generated integer into either a digit from 0-9 or a letter from a-z:
set theLength to (text returned of (display dialog "Generate random alphanumeric string of how many characters? (enter an integer, please)" default answer "")) as integer
set n to 0
set outputString to ""
repeat while n < theLength
set thisNum to (random number from 48 to 122)
if thisNum < 58 or thisNum > 96 then
set outputString to outputString & (ASCII character thisNum)
set n to n + 1
end if
end repeat
display dialog outputString
on generate(len)
set res to ""
repeat len times
set res to res & some item of "abcdefg" -- [your characters here]
end repeat
return res
end generate
generate(5)
