[Python-ideas] Pre-PEP Adding A Secrets Module To The Standard Library

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Mon, Sep 21, 2015 at 12:51:13PM -0500, Tim Peters wrote:
> [Tim]
> >> ...
> >> No attempt to be minimal here.  More-than-less "obvious" is more important:
> >>
> >> Bound methods of a SystemRandom instance
> >>     .randrange()
> >>     .randint()
> >>     .randbits()
> >>         renamed from .getrandbits()
> >>     .randbelow(exclusive_upper_bound)
> >>         renamed from private ._randbelow()
> >>     .choice()
> 
> [Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info>]
> > While we're bike-shedding,
> 
> I refuse to bikeshed on this.  I posted a concrete proposal just to
> enrage others into it ;-)  So I'll just sketch my thinking:

Consider me enraged. Hulk smash puny humans!


[...]
> > When would somebody use randbelow(n) rather than randrange(n)?
> 
> For the same reason they'd use randbits(n) instead of randrange(1 <<
> n) ;-)  That is, familiarity and obviousness.

Okay, that makes sense.


> > Are there use-cases for a strong random float between 0 and 1? If
> > so, is it sufficient to say secrets.randbelow(sys.maxsize)/sys.maxsize,
> > or should we offer secrets.random() and/or secrets.uniform(a, b)?
> 
> I don't know of any "security use" for random floats.  But if you want
> to add a recipe to the docs, point them to SystemRandom.random
> instead.  That gets it right.

Good enough for me.



-- 
Steve