od -N4 -An -i works like this: read four bytes (-N4) treat them as raw binary (-An) output them as a signed decimal integer (-i)
Additionally, this result will be 75 characters wide (padded with spaces before the terminating newline), with an extra blank line at the end. It's a fixed-width-character tabular-format thing. Since we are already using the shell, you can get rid of the extraneous whitespace like this: 2!:0 'echo `cat /dev/urandom|od -N4 -An -i`' If you want an unsigned result, the man page suggests -D (or -t u4) instead of -i. FYI, -- Raul On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 11:20 AM, Brian Schott <[email protected]> wrote: > Bill, > > Your approach produced the following results on my Mac OS X. Notice > the two blank lines and the negative number result. > > 2!:0 'cat /dev/urandom|od -N4 -An -i' > 818045955 > > > 2!:0 'cat /dev/urandom|od -N4 -An -i' > -1293144445 > > > > -- > (B=) > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
