Is there a certain size of the uniqid function? - php

I'm just wondering, does anyone know, whether uniqid function in PHP has a certain size? And If so, how many strings is it? I'm a bit confused as PHP manual says, that uniqid is 23 characters long when extended entropy used. But based on my observation, it varies between 26 to 28 characters.

I cant confirm this behaviour:
php -r 'for($i = 0; $i < 1000; $i++) print strlen(uniqid("", true)) . "\n";'
Tested on OS X and Ubuntu with PHP 5.3.x yields 23 on each iteration.
What os/PHP version are you using?
As the OP pointed out in the comments to his question: leaving out the prefix should fix the issue ;)
To elaborate a bit more, one can look at the PHP source code: https://svn.php.net/viewvc/php/php-src/tags/php_5_3_8/ext/standard/uniqid.c?view=markup at line 79:
spprintf(&uniqid, 0, "%s%08x%05x%.8F", prefix, sec, usec, php_combined_lcg(TSRMLS_C) * 10);
If no prefix is supplied and one looks up the definition of php_combined_lcg which returns a float with one leading decimal the output of uniqid should always be 23 chars long.

Related

Why string with hex format number convert to correct integer value? PHP

I've found out unclear php behavior
echo '0x12' + 2; // 20
As I understand from http://php.net/manual/en/language.types.string.php string '0x12' should cast to 0 like '0b11' do
echo '0b11' + 1; // 1
Please explain why is it so.
UPDATE
First example give me 2 in 7.x and 20 in 5.x versions.
Thanks AntoineB and Mark Baker for the comments. From this point I can conclude it was more like an issue in php 5.x rather then feature and fixed in php 7.x (Backward incompatible changes for PHP7).

Same algorithm , different result

Good day, I am making my hashing algorthm, so I am rewriting it to C++ from PHP.
But result in C++ is different than php result. PHP result contains more than 10 characters, C++ result only 6 - 8 characters. But those last 8 characters of PHP result are same as C++ result.
So here is PHP code:
<?php function JL1($text) {
$text.="XQ";
$length=strlen($text);
$hash=0;
for($j=0;$j<$length;$j++) {
$p=$text[$j];
$s=ord($p);
if($s%2==0) $s+=9999;
$hash+=$s*($j+1)*0x40ACEF*0xFF;
}
$hash+=33*0x40ACEF*0xFF;
$hash=sprintf("%x",$hash);
return $hash; } ?>
And here C++ code:
char * JL1(char * str){
int size=(strlen(str)+3),s=0; //Edit here (+2 replaced with +3)
if(size<=6) //Edit here (<9 replaced with <=6)
size=9;
char *final=new char[size],temp;
strcpy(final,str);
strcat(final,"XQ");
long length=strlen(final),hash=0L;
for(int i=0;i<length;i++){
temp=final[i];
s=(int)temp;
if(s%2==0)s+=9999;
hash+=((s)*(i+1)*(0x40ACEF)*(0xFF));
}
hash+=33*(0x40ACEF)*(0xFF);
sprintf(final,"%x",hash); //to hex string
final[8]='\0';
return final; }
Example of C++ result for word: "Hi!" : 053c81be
And PHP result for this word: 324c053c81be
Does anyone know,where is that mistake and how to fix that, whether in php or in cpp code?
By the way, when I cut those first letters in php result I get C++ result, but it wont help, because C++ result have not to be 8 characters long, it can be just 6 characters long in some cases.
Where to begin...
Data types do not have fixed guaranteed sizes in C or C++. As such, hash may overflow every iteration, or it may never do so.
chars can be either signed or unsigned, therefore converting one to an integer may result in negative and positive values on different implementations, for the same character.
You may be writing past the end of final when printing the value of hash into it. You may also be cutting the string off prematurely when setting the 9th character to 0.
strcat will write past the end of final if str is at least 7 characters long.
s, a relatively short-lived temporary variable, is declared way too soon. Same with temp.
Your code looks very crowded with almost no whitespace, and is very hard to read.
The expression "33*(0x40ACEF)*(0xFF)" overflows; did you mean 0x4DF48431L?
Consider using std::string instead of char arrays when dealing with strings in C++.
long hash in C++ is most likely limited to 32 bits on your platform. PHP's number isn't.
sprintf(final, "%x", hash) produces a possibly incorrect result. %x interprets the argument as an unsigned int, which is 32 bits on both Windows and Linux x64. So it's interpreting a long as an unsigned int, if your long is more than 32 bits, your result will get truncated.
See all the issues raised by aib. Especially the premature termination of the result.
You will need to deal with the 3rd point yourself, but I can answer the first two. You need to clamp the result to 32 bits: $hash &= 0xFFFFFFFF;.
If you clamp the final value, the php code will produce the same results as the C++ code would on x64 Linux (that means 64 bit integers for intermediate results).
If you clamp it after every computation, you should get the same results as the C++ code would on 32 bit platforms or Windows x64 (32 bit integers for intermediate results).
There seems to be a bug here...
int size=(strlen(str)+2),s=0;
if(size<9)
size=9;
char *final=new char[size],temp;
strcpy(final,str);
strcat(final,"XQ");
If strlen was say 10, then size will be 12 and 12 chars will be allocated.
You then copy in the original 10 characters, and add XQ, but the final terminating \0 will be outside of the allocated memory.
Not sure if that's your bug or not but it doesn;t look right

PHP unserialized integer from 64-bit to 32-bit

I have been trying to unserialize on a 32-bit server an object that was serialized on a 64-bit server. I have isolated my problem to an integer in the object. Here is a small reproduction of the problem.
On a 64-bit machine:
$i = serialize('20110510134021'); //i:20110510134021;
On a 32-bit machine:
$i = unserialize('i:20110510134021;');
Gives the error
Notice: unserialize(): Error at offset 0 of 16 bytes
Now I understand that those serialization method shouldn't be used for cross system data transmition. However, we are merely trying to migrate the data to another system, not use it actively for transfers. This is a one time thing.
I would think that this might be due to integer overflow, but even on the 32-bit server I can do something like
$i = 20110510134021;
echo $i;
And it will work fine. I'm guessing PHP integer types scale to some double type or something like that. But why doesn't it do that when it unserializes?
How can I unserialize those objects? If I can't, is there any way to convert them to something else? Finally, has anyone written a deserialize method in PHP itself? Or has details on the protocol? I could use that and have a custom case for those integers.
Thanks.
Note: I do not have access to the original data, only the serialized result.
The max integer on 32 bit system is 4294967296;
$i = 20110510134021; works because PHP converts the variable to double.
So replace i with d
$i = unserialize('d:20110510134021;');
If you run this script, you will see the correct represenation of the variable on the system you are running (d: on 32 bit system, i: on 64 bit system):
$int = 20110510134021;
var_dump(serialize($int));
The simple solution is if you know that there is a chance that data serialized on 64 bit will be unserialized on 32 bit machine is to cast it to (double) before serializing.
Then it will be unserialized as a double, giving you more bits per integer than a standard 4-byte per integer (32 bits)
Once unserialized just work with that number as a double. In 99% of the cases this is a good solution. There is still a chance that for a very large number the number of bits allocated to the 'real' part on the number to a double on a 32 bit machine will not be enough. I think it's 56 bits, so the maximum integer is still significantly larger that the 32bits for the int type.
How about:
$serialized = 'i:20110510134021';
if (preg_match('/i\:([\d]+)/', $serialized, $match))
{
$unserialized = $match[1];
}

Php rand vs Perl rand

I am trying to port a piece of code from perl to php. The perl code snippet is part of akamai's video on demand link generation script. The script generates seed based on the location / URL of the video file (which will always be constant for a single URL). And then it is used in generating serial ID for stream (which is basically a random number between 1 and 2000 using the seed). Here is the perl code.$seed=6718;
srand($seed);
print(int(rand(1999)) + 1); // return 442 every time And the converted PHP code is:$seed=6718;
srand($seed);
echo(rand(0, 1999) + 1); //returns 155 every time
Does php rand behaves differently than perl one?
Yes. You can't depend on their algorithms being the same. For perl, which rand is used depends on what platform your perl was built for.
You may have more luck using a particular algorithm; for instance, Mersenne Twister looks to be available for both PHP and Perl.
Update: trying it produces different results, so that one at least won't do the trick.
Update 2: From the perl numbers you show, your perl is using the drand48 library; I don't know whether that's available for PHP at all, and google isn't helping.
[clippy]It looks like your trying to hash a number, maybe you want to use a hash function?[/clippy]
Hash functions are designed to take an input and produce a consistently repeatable value, that is in appearance random. As a bonus they often have cross language implementations.
Using srand() with rand() to get what is basically a hash value is a fairly bad idea. Different languages use different algorithms, some just use system libraries. Changing (or upgrading) the OS, standard C library, or language can result in wildly different results.
Using SHA1 to get a number between 1 and 2000 is a bit overkill, but you can at least be sure that you could port the code to nearly any language and still get the same result.
use Digest::SHA1;
# get a integer hash value from $in between $min (inclusive) and $max (exclusive)
sub get_int_hash {
my ($in, $min, $max) = #_;
# calculate the SHA1 of $in, note $in is converted to a string.
my $sha = Digest::SHA1->new;
$sha->add( "$in" );
my $digest = $sha->hexdigest;
# use the last 7 characters of the digest (28 bits) for an effective range of 0 - 268,435,455.
my $value = hex substr $digest, -7;
# scale and shift the value to the desired range.
my $out = int( $value / 0x10000000 * ( $max - $min ) ) + $min;
return $out;
}
print get_int_hash(6718, 1, 2000); #this should print 812 for any SHA1 implementation.
Just seeing this snippet of code it is impossible to say if it is the same.
At first you need to knew that even a random generator like the rand() function is not really random. It calculates a new value with a mathematical formula from the previous number. With the srand() function you can set the start value.
Calling srand() with the same argument each time means that the program always returns the same numbers in the same order.
If you really want random numbers, in Perl you should remove the initialization of srand(). Because Perl automatically sets srand() to a better (random) value when you first call the rand() function.
If your program really wants random numbers, then it should also be okay for PHP. But even in PHP i would look if srand() is automatically set and set to a more random value.
If your program don't work with random numbers and instead really want a stream of numbers that is always the same, then the snipet of code are probably not identical. Even if you do the same initialization with srand() it could be that PHP uses another formula to calculate the next "random" number.
So you need to look at your surrounding code if you code really wants random numbers, if yes you can use this code. But even then you should look for a better initialization for srand().

regain constant pseudo-random in PHP 5.2

I am including the same "random.inc" in foo.php and bar.php. For each, I want reproducible "random" results.
So in foo.php I always want one set of numbers and/or keywords. In bar.php another. Which shouldn't change on reload. That's what I mean by contant pseudo-random. And that's why I seeding on the url. However I still get different results for individual numbers as well as for array pickson every reload. This is the full php file:
<?
header('Content-Type: text/plain');
$seed = crc32( $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] );
echo "phpversion: ".phpversion()."\nseed: $seed\n";
srand( $seed ); // (seed verified to be contant as expected)
// neither single values nor array pics turn out deterministic
echo ''.rand(0,100).' '.rand(0,100).' '.rand(0,100)."\n";
$values = array( '0'=>21,'1'=>89,'2'=>96,'3'=>47,'4'=>88 );
print_r( array_rand( $values, 3 ) );
?>
In the days of PHP4.1 it was (verified) possible to achieve constant pseudo-random like this. array_rand API documentation describes as a feature that since 4.2 initialization happens automatically. Perhaps this is overriding any explicit seeding? (if so, perhaps explicit seeding should raise an internal PHP flag, preventing automatic seeding?). Btw: mt_srand() and srand() are equally not working.
I would really like to get my deterministic / constant pseudo-random back...
Update: Solution below (Windows and/or version 5.2 's fault)
Works for me (PHP/5.3.6):
<?php
$data = range(1, 100);
srand(1);
print_r(array_rand($data, 3));
... always prints:
Array
(
[0] => 21
[1] => 89
[2] => 95
)
... in my machine. Apparently, the exact numbers differ depending on the exact environment but they're reproducible.
Guys, you are all correct! (Sorry, I answer it myself now)
my web hoster runs 5.2.17 under Linux 2.6.36, and above problem exists.
under Win x64 5.3.0 everything works as expected.
So it's everyone's guess if that's an OS related bug and/or a PHP bug, fixed in 5.3.0.
Given that random constant seeding worked before, I am guessing they fixed in 5.3 the bug that came with the autoseed feature enhancement in 4.2. Anyway, Thanx again, at least there's clarity now.
The seeding functions are still available, and should still work; it's just since PHP 4.2 they are automatically seeded with the time on page load; but you can still call them to reset the random sequence to a known starting point.
[edit] I have just done a quick test program to make sure I wasn't imagining it!
mt_srand(50000);
print "rand="+mt_rand(0,10000);
Using PHP 5.2, this always results in the same value being printed (1749).
[EDIT]
As noted by #cwd and in the accepted answer to this question, there appears to be a discrepancy in PHP 5.2's behaviour with random number seeding between the Linux and Windows versions. In PHP 5.2 on Linux, the above technique does not appear to work.
Fortunately, the bug seems to have been fixed in PHP 5.3, so the solution to this problem is simply to upgrade. (PHP 5.2 is not supported any longer, so you should upgrade anyway)
Btw, if anyone else wants "constant windows-pre-5.3 pseudo-random" (of low quality, e.g. for stuff like SEO buzzwording) this is a tested workaround:
$r = abs(crc32($URL))%20; // a number between 0 and 19, based on URL
In PHP 5.2.17 and probably on all versions of PHP 5.2, (not sure about windows), we lose the capability of generating random numbers based on a seed as PHP changes the algorithm used for random numbers.
rand and mt_rand are "broken" not only because they will not give one random number, but they will also not give a same sequence of random numbers - even when using a seed!
At first the PHP developers tried to argue that this is the way that it "should" work, but we can guess they caught enough grief about the problem that they have reverted the way that it works with PHP 5.3.
See the php mt_rand page and the bug tracker to learn about this issue.

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