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Rand

Test Status Crate Book API API

Rand is a set of crates supporting (pseudo-)random generators:

With broad support for random value generation and random processes:

  • Standard random value sampling, Uniform-ranged value sampling and more
  • Samplers for a large number of non-uniform random number distributions via our own rand_distr and via the statrs
  • Random processes (mostly choose and shuffle) via rand::seq traits

All with:

  • Portably reproducible output
  • #[no_std] compatibility (partial)
  • Many performance optimisations thanks to contributions from the wide user-base

Rand is not:

  • Small (LOC). Most low-level crates are small, but the higher-level rand and rand_distr each contain a lot of functionality.
  • Simple (implementation). We have a strong focus on correctness, speed and flexibility, but not simplicity. If you prefer a small-and-simple library, there are alternatives including fastrand and oorandom.
  • A cryptography library. Rand provides functionality for generating unpredictable random data (potentially applicable depending on requirements) but does not provide high-level cryptography functionality.

Rand is a community project and cannot provide legally-binding guarantees of security.

Documentation:

Usage

Add this to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
rand = "0.8.5"

To get started using Rand, see The Book.

Versions

Rand is mature (suitable for general usage, with infrequent breaking releases which minimise breakage) but not yet at 1.0. Current versions are:

  • Version 0.8 was released in December 2020 with many small changes.
  • Version 0.9 is in development with many small changes.

See the CHANGELOG or Upgrade Guide for more details.

Crate Features

Rand is built with these features enabled by default:

  • std enables functionality dependent on the std lib
  • alloc (implied by std) enables functionality requiring an allocator
  • getrandom (implied by std) is an optional dependency providing the code behind rngs::OsRng
  • std_rng enables inclusion of StdRng, ThreadRng

Optionally, the following dependencies can be enabled:

  • log enables logging via log

Additionally, these features configure Rand:

  • small_rng enables inclusion of the SmallRng PRNG
  • nightly includes some additions requiring nightly Rust
  • simd_support (experimental) enables sampling of SIMD values (uniformly random SIMD integers and floats), requiring nightly Rust

Note that nightly features are not stable and therefore not all library and compiler versions will be compatible. This is especially true of Rand's experimental simd_support feature.

Rand supports limited functionality in no_std mode (enabled via default-features = false). In this case, OsRng and from_os_rng are unavailable (unless getrandom is enabled), large parts of seq are unavailable (unless alloc is enabled), and ThreadRng is unavailable.

Portability and platform support

Many (but not all) algorithms are intended to have reproducible output. Read more in the book: Portability.

The Rand library supports a variety of CPU architectures. Platform integration is outsourced to getrandom.

WASM support

Seeding entropy from OS on WASM target wasm32-unknown-unknown is not automatically supported by rand or getrandom. If you are fine with seeding the generator manually, you can disable the getrandom feature and use the methods on the SeedableRng trait. To enable seeding from OS, either use a different target such as wasm32-wasi or add a direct dependency on getrandom with the js feature (if the target supports JavaScript). See getrandom#WebAssembly support.

License

Rand is distributed under the terms of both the MIT license and the Apache License (Version 2.0).

See LICENSE-APACHE and LICENSE-MIT, and COPYRIGHT for details.