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copied!<p>Well, you didn't clarify all the questions I asked in my comment, but I'll assume that you want a function that can take a string of "possible" characters and a length of string to return. Commented thoroughly as requested, using more variables than I would normally, for clarity:</p> <pre><code>function get_random_string($valid_chars, $length) { // start with an empty random string $random_string = ""; // count the number of chars in the valid chars string so we know how many choices we have $num_valid_chars = strlen($valid_chars); // repeat the steps until we've created a string of the right length for ($i = 0; $i < $length; $i++) { // pick a random number from 1 up to the number of valid chars $random_pick = mt_rand(1, $num_valid_chars); // take the random character out of the string of valid chars // subtract 1 from $random_pick because strings are indexed starting at 0, and we started picking at 1 $random_char = $valid_chars[$random_pick-1]; // add the randomly-chosen char onto the end of our string so far $random_string .= $random_char; } // return our finished random string return $random_string; } </code></pre> <p>To call this function with your example data, you'd call it something like:</p> <pre><code>$original_string = 'abcdefghi'; $random_string = get_random_string($original_string, 6); </code></pre> <p>Note that this function doesn't check for uniqueness in the valid chars passed to it. For example, if you called it with a valid chars string of <code>'AAAB'</code>, it would be three times more likely to choose an A for each letter as a B. That could be considered a bug or a feature, depending on your needs.</p>

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