A random number is a number chosen at random from a given distribution. Selecting a large number of them reproduces the underlying distribution.
Elixir lacks a module to produce random numbers. However, it can use underlying Erlang modules like rand (now favored over random) or crypto to select random items from enumerables.
We should note that :rand.uniform(n) returns integers. Enum.random's documentation also claims that it can effectively generate random numbers by choosing a value at random from the range limit.
This allows us to create integers inside range bounds without traversing the entire range.
We use the :rand.uniform(n) method to generate random numbers in Elixir.
:rand.uniform(n)
The :rand.uniform(n) receives a number/integer n as a parameter, which represents a range of 0 to n. For example, if we want a random number between 0 and 50, we pass in n = 50.
Note: The given range is inclusive of
0andn.
# prints a random numberrandom_number = :rand.uniform(256)IO.inspect random_number
Line 2: We create a variable random_number, where we use :rand.uniform(256). This selects a random number between 0 and 256, and passes it to the random_number variable.
Line 3: We use IO.inspect to generate the output.
Let’s run the code above to see the output as it generates a random number.