openssl/doc/crypto/BN_rand.pod
Matt Caswell aafbe1ccd2 Document updates from wiki.
PR#3071

The primary changes made are:
- Updates to the "NAME" section of many pages to correctly reflect the
functions defined on those pages. This section is automatically parsed
by the util/extract-names.pl script, so if it is not correct then
running "man" will not correctly locate the right manual pages.
- Updates to take account of where functions are now deprecated
- Full documentation of the ec sub-library
- A number of other typo corrections and other minor tweaks
2013-06-12 23:42:08 +01:00

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=pod
=head1 NAME
BN_rand, BN_pseudo_rand, BN_rand_range, BN_pseudo_rand_range - generate pseudo-random number
=head1 SYNOPSIS
#include <openssl/bn.h>
int BN_rand(BIGNUM *rnd, int bits, int top, int bottom);
int BN_pseudo_rand(BIGNUM *rnd, int bits, int top, int bottom);
int BN_rand_range(BIGNUM *rnd, BIGNUM *range);
int BN_pseudo_rand_range(BIGNUM *rnd, BIGNUM *range);
=head1 DESCRIPTION
BN_rand() generates a cryptographically strong pseudo-random number of
B<bits> bits in length and stores it in B<rnd>. If B<top> is -1, the
most significant bit of the random number can be zero. If B<top> is 0,
it is set to 1, and if B<top> is 1, the two most significant bits of
the number will be set to 1, so that the product of two such random
numbers will always have 2*B<bits> length. If B<bottom> is true, the
number will be odd.
BN_pseudo_rand() does the same, but pseudo-random numbers generated by
this function are not necessarily unpredictable. They can be used for
non-cryptographic purposes and for certain purposes in cryptographic
protocols, but usually not for key generation etc.
BN_rand_range() generates a cryptographically strong pseudo-random
number B<rnd> in the range 0 <lt>= B<rnd> E<lt> B<range>.
BN_pseudo_rand_range() does the same, but is based on BN_pseudo_rand(),
and hence numbers generated by it are not necessarily unpredictable.
The PRNG must be seeded prior to calling BN_rand() or BN_rand_range().
=head1 RETURN VALUES
The functions return 1 on success, 0 on error.
The error codes can be obtained by L<ERR_get_error(3)|ERR_get_error(3)>.
=head1 SEE ALSO
L<bn(3)|bn(3)>, L<ERR_get_error(3)|ERR_get_error(3)>, L<rand(3)|rand(3)>,
L<RAND_add(3)|RAND_add(3)>, L<RAND_bytes(3)|RAND_bytes(3)>
=head1 HISTORY
BN_rand() is available in all versions of SSLeay and OpenSSL.
BN_pseudo_rand() was added in OpenSSL 0.9.5. The B<top> == -1 case
and the function BN_rand_range() were added in OpenSSL 0.9.6a.
BN_pseudo_rand_range() was added in OpenSSL 0.9.6c.
=cut