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Kit Sunde
Asked: 2014-01-07 01:00:55 +0800 CST

How can I get the bash $RANDOM in a makefile?

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This works on OSX:

RANDOM := $(shell /bin/bash -c "echo $$RANDOM")

test:
    echo $(RANDOM)

For cross platform random numbers I've instead resorted to this:

RANDOM := $(shell od -An -N2 -i /dev/random | tr -d ' ')

How can I get the first example to work?

bash

1 Answers

  1. The reason your first line works on OSX and not Ubuntu, is likely because sh is bash on OSX. $$RANDOM is already expanded by the time the bash -c gets around to executing it, since you used "" quotes. So you probably want this:

    RANDOM := $(shell bash -c 'echo $$RANDOM')

    Personally I'd probably go with awk. Something like

    awk 'BEGIN{srand();printf("%d", 65536*rand())}'
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