urandom – pseudo-random number generation

This module implements a subset of the corresponding CPython module, as described below. For more information, refer to the original CPython documentation: random.

This module is used to generate pseudo-random numbers. On all Pycopy platforms, this module is not seeded on startup, which means that if you do not explicitly call seed() function with a suitable varying value, the numbers returned by the getrandbits() function will be the same for each fresh interpreter session. This is a deliberate design decision, to emphasize the fact that this module does not provide true randomness.

Seeding the pseudo-random generator lies on a user application, by whatever means suitable for a particular application. For example, having a pseudo-random, but stable predictable sequence (as provided by this module by default) is useful for reproducible testing. For some applications, seeding with the current time (perhaps, lower milliseconds or microseconds of it, as provided by utime.ticks_ms() or utime.ticks_us()) would be enough. Yet for other, a true random generator may be required. (Note that this module does not guarantee that it is a cryptographically secure random number generator). For systems which support it, a high-quality random number generator should be provided by uos.urandom() function (values from which can be used to seed this module).

Functions

urandom.seed(value)

Seed pseudo-random generator with an integer value, which should be sufficiently random itself. As explained above, if this function is not called, the numbers returned from getrandbits() will be the same for each session.

urandom.getrandbits(num_bits)

Return an unsigned (non-negative) pseudo-random number of num_bits bit size, i.e. in the range of [0, 2**num_bits - 1] (inclusive). Miximum supported value of num_bits is 32, though some implementations may apply even lower limit (so use the value not higher than actually needed for a particular use).