Understanding the Dream

In a recent project, I needed a function that would generate a random string for me. In my case, I was creating a random file name to store some data, but there are other uses as well, so I am posting the BASH code here in the hope that it will help others out ther eon the net writing BASH scripts and need a good random string function:

#!/bin/bash
function randomString {
        # if a param was passed, it's the length of the string we want
        if [[ -n $1 ]] && [[ "$1" -lt 20 ]]; then
                local myStrLength=$1;
        else
                # otherwise set to default
                local myStrLength=8;
        fi

        local mySeedNumber=$$`date +%N`; # seed will be the pid + nanoseconds
        local myRandomString=$( echo $mySeedNumber | md5sum | md5sum );
        # create our actual random string
        myRandomResult="${myRandomString:2:myStrLength}"
}

randomString 10;
echo $myRandomResult;