Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:107312
MIME-Version: 1.0
References: <A91E718E-B023-42DC-AC8D-BC989F5A80E4@cschneid.com>
 <CAF+90c_75x0ZoD63CoLXY3kUKNQQuR_HhaO998osHuzV7ZGXuw@mail.gmail.com>
 <696dc114-c2df-40aa-aad6-5b87d4373c0e@www.fastmail.com> <9479751B-281E-4590-85E7-51EEAF066C73@cschneid.com>
 <11c4fa89-29b3-4639-9dd9-5adff968e437@www.fastmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <11c4fa89-29b3-4639-9dd9-5adff968e437@www.fastmail.com>
Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2019 16:49:24 +0100
Message-ID: <CALKiJKqkf0Ux5K8BSj3LynFz+UGy3UW5F+t9Bdx6R25soJAuFA@mail.gmail.com>
To: php internals <internals@lists.php.net>
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="000000000000b8ca8305934e7bec"
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] PHP 7.4 BC break with openssl_random_pseudo_bytes()
From: rowan.collins@gmail.com (Rowan Tommins)

--000000000000b8ca8305934e7bec
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

On Tue, 24 Sep 2019 at 15:26, Larry Garfield <larry@garfieldtech.com> wrote:

> And no, random_int(0,0) does what it says on the tin: return a random int
> between 0 and 0.  If you call it that way, well, it's your own PEBCAK.  But
> it throws an exception if the underlying sources of entropy are not working
> for some reason, rather than returning something that can easily be
> mistaken for a valid integer.
>


I think the argument was that the consistent behaviour would be for
random_bytes(0) and openssl_random_pseudo_bytes(0) to return '' (i.e. a
random string which was zero bytes long). The result is just as logical,
and just as meaningless, as "a number between 0 and 0" - in both cases,
there is exactly one valid value, so every random choice returns that value.

The BC break is a separate discussion - the RFC listed some changes to
openssl_random_pseudo_bytes but not this one.

Regards,
-- 
Rowan Tommins
[IMSoP]

--000000000000b8ca8305934e7bec--