til/unix/generate-random-20-character-hex-string.md

Generate Random 20-Character Hex String

The openssl utility has a bunch of subcommands including rand. The rand subcommand can be used to generate pseudo-random numbers.

openssl rand -hex 10
5ce459896581abc81a65

The number at the end of the command tells rand how many bytes of output to generate. When the -hex flag is used, it will encode the output in hex.

The 10 bytes of output in hex will result in a 20-character string. That number can be adjusted to your needs.

See man openssl or openssl rand -help for more details.