Random function not very random. (ie. at all)

[bhamm]

Hello everyone. This is disturbing..

I have a function that creates an alphanumeric 'id'. This id becomes part of a URL taking an attendee to their record online, to register for an event (custom web publishing, php).

So, the same series of id's is being generated in several databases. I can reproduce this problem at will. It's like FM is deciding on some kind of pattern ahead of time. That's not random. We're all on Mac OS X 10.5, FMPro 9.03.

Any ideas?

Let ( [ 



string = 



Middle("ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ01234567890123456789"; Int(Random* 46); 1) & 

Middle("ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ01234567890123456789"; Int(Random* 46); 1) & 

Middle("ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ01234567890123456789"; Int(Random* 46); 1) & 

Middle("ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ01234567890123456789"; Int(Random* 46); 1) & 

Middle("ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ01234567890123456789"; Int(Random* 46); 1) & 

Middle("ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ01234567890123456789"; Int(Random* 46); 1) 



] ; 



Lower (string)



 )

[comment]

According to FMI, this issue affects machines with more than one active network interface card and was fixed in the 10.0v3 update.

http://filemaker.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/filemaker.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=7291

[Vaughan]

There is also a big difference between "random" and "unique" and the Random function does not guarantee unique.