How do I create a random alpha-numeric string in C++?

Question

Mehrdad Afshari's answer would do the trick, but I found it a bit too verbose for this simple task. Look-up tables can sometimes do wonders:

#include <ctime>
#include <iostream>
#include <unistd.h>

std::string gen_random(const int len) {
    static const char alphanum[] =
        "0123456789"
        "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ"
        "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz";
    std::string tmp_s;
    tmp_s.reserve(len);

    for (int i = 0; i < len; ++i) {
        tmp_s += alphanum[rand() % (sizeof(alphanum) - 1)];
    }
    
    return tmp_s;
}

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
    srand((unsigned)time(NULL) * getpid());     
    std::cout << gen_random(12) << "\n";        
    return 0;
}

Note that rand generates poor-quality random numbers.

Here's my adaptation of Ates Goral's answer using C++11. I've added the lambda in here, but the principle is that you could pass it in and thereby control what characters your string contains:

std::string random_string( size_t length )
{
    auto randchar = []() -> char
    {
        const char charset[] =
        "0123456789"
        "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ"
        "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz";
        const size_t max_index = (sizeof(charset) - 1);
        return charset[ rand() % max_index ];
    };
    std::string str(length,0);
    std::generate_n( str.begin(), length, randchar );
    return str;
}

Here is an example of passing in a lambda to the random string function: http://ideone.com/Ya8EKf

Why would you use C++11?

1. Because you can produce strings that follow a certain probability distribution (or distribution combination) for the character set you're interested in.
2. Because it has built-in support for non-deterministic random numbers
3. Because it supports unicode, so you could change this to an internationalized version.

For example:

#include <iostream>
#include <vector>
#include <random>
#include <functional> //for std::function
#include <algorithm>  //for std::generate_n

typedef std::vector<char> char_array;

char_array charset()
{
    //Change this to suit
    return char_array( 
    {'0','1','2','3','4',
    '5','6','7','8','9',
    'A','B','C','D','E','F',
    'G','H','I','J','K',
    'L','M','N','O','P',
    'Q','R','S','T','U',
    'V','W','X','Y','Z',
    'a','b','c','d','e','f',
    'g','h','i','j','k',
    'l','m','n','o','p',
    'q','r','s','t','u',
    'v','w','x','y','z'
    });
};    

// given a function that generates a random character,
// return a string of the requested length
std::string random_string( size_t length, std::function<char(void)> rand_char )
{
    std::string str(length,0);
    std::generate_n( str.begin(), length, rand_char );
    return str;
}

int main()
{
    //0) create the character set.
    //   yes, you can use an array here, 
    //   but a function is cleaner and more flexible
    const auto ch_set = charset();

    //1) create a non-deterministic random number generator      
    std::default_random_engine rng(std::random_device{}());

    //2) create a random number "shaper" that will give
    //   us uniformly distributed indices into the character set
    std::uniform_int_distribution<> dist(0, ch_set.size()-1);

    //3) create a function that ties them together, to get:
    //   a non-deterministic uniform distribution from the 
    //   character set of your choice.
    auto randchar = [ ch_set,&dist,&rng ](){return ch_set[ dist(rng) ];};

    //4) set the length of the string you want and profit!        
    auto length = 5;
    std::cout<<random_string(length,randchar)<<std::endl;
    return 0;
}

Sample output.

My 2p solution:

#include <random>
#include <string>

std::string random_string(std::string::size_type length)
{
    static auto& chrs = "0123456789"
        "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"
        "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ";

    thread_local static std::mt19937 rg{std::random_device{}()};
    thread_local static std::uniform_int_distribution<std::string::size_type> pick(0, sizeof(chrs) - 2);

    std::string s;

    s.reserve(length);

    while(length--)
        s += chrs[pick(rg)];

    return s;
}

Rather than manually looping, prefer using the appropriate C++ algorithm, in this case std::generate_n, with a proper random number generator:

auto generate_random_alphanumeric_string(std::size_t len) -> std::string {
    static constexpr auto chars =
        "0123456789"
        "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ"
        "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz";
    thread_local auto rng = random_generator<>();
    auto dist = std::uniform_int_distribution{{}, std::strlen(chars) - 1};
    auto result = std::string(len, '\0');
    std::generate_n(begin(result), len, [&]() { return chars[dist(rng)]; });
    return result;
}

This is close to something I would call the “canonical” solution for this problem.

Unfortunately, correctly seeding a generic C++ random number generator (e.g. MT19937) is really hard. The above code therefore uses a helper function template, random_generator:

template <typename T = std::mt19937>
auto random_generator() -> T {
    auto constexpr seed_bytes = sizeof(typename T::result_type) * T::state_size;
    auto constexpr seed_len = seed_bytes / sizeof(std::seed_seq::result_type);
    auto seed = std::array<std::seed_seq::result_type, seed_len>();
    auto dev = std::random_device();
    std::generate_n(begin(seed), seed_len, std::ref(dev));
    auto seed_seq = std::seed_seq(begin(seed), end(seed));
    return T{seed_seq};
}

This is complex and relatively inefficient. Luckily it’s used to initialise a thread_local variable and is therefore only invoked once per thread.

Finally, the necessary includes for the above are:

#include <algorithm>
#include <array>
#include <cstring>
#include <functional>
#include <random>
#include <string>

The above code uses class template argument deduction and thus requires C++17. It can be trivially adapted for earlier versions by adding the required template arguments.

 void gen_random(char *s, size_t len) {
     for (size_t i = 0; i < len; ++i) {
         int randomChar = rand()%(26+26+10);
         if (randomChar < 26)
             s[i] = 'a' + randomChar;
         else if (randomChar < 26+26)
             s[i] = 'A' + randomChar - 26;
         else
             s[i] = '0' + randomChar - 26 - 26;
     }
     s[len] = 0;
 }