Date:         Fri, 9 Feb 2007 13:58:37 -0800
Reply-To:     "Parise, Carol A." <PariseC@sutterhealth.org>
Sender:       "SPSSX(r) Discussion" <SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         "Parise, Carol A." <PariseC@sutterhealth.org>
Subject:      Re: random number with alpha
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Hi all,

Both Gene and Richard's solution worked great.

I had generated random numbers in excel and imported them into SPSS. For Gene's solution to work...

String letters(a26).
String password(a7) numbers(a6).
Compute letters='ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ'.
Compute draw=trunc(rv.uniform(1,27)).
Compute password=concat(numbers,substr(letters,draw,1)).

I had to make sure my numbers were 6 digits or less.

These are both great little programs i am likely to use again.

Thanks

Carol


-----Original Message-----
From: SPSSX(r) Discussion [mailto:SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf Of
Richard Ristow
Sent: Friday, February 09, 2007 11:18 AM
To: SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: random number with alpha


At 12:27 AM 2/9/2007, Parise, Carol A. wrote:

>I'm creating what amounts to passwords and i want to do this with a 6
>digit  random number + some character (either alpha or $, & etc).
>
>Is SPSS able to create random characters? Also would someone know how
>to put these 2 fields together?

To answer the latter question, the result has to be a character field.
Use the STRING function to convert your number, then catenate.

To answer the first, you can get a random character by drawing a random
integer in the appropriate range, and using it to look up in a list of
characters.

In the following, the 6-digit random numbers are selected from the full
range, 0 to 999999, and are entered into the password with leading 0's
where necessary. The following is SPSS 15 draft output. (Code & output
not saved separately.)

NEW FILE.
INPUT PROGRAM.
.  NUMERIC LINE_NUM (F3).
.  String  password(a7).
.  String  #letters(a27).
.  Compute #letters='ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ$'.
.  NUMERIC #Rand_Num (N6)
           /#Rand_Idx (F2).
.  STRING  #Rand_Chr (A1).
.  LOOP   LINE_NUM = 1 TO 5.
.     COMPUTE #Rand_Num = TRUNC(rv.uniform(0,1e6)).
.     COMPUTE #Rand_Idx = TRUNC(rv.uniform(1,28)).
.     COMPUTE #Rand_Chr = SUBSTR(#letters,#Rand_Idx,1).
.     Compute password  = concat(STRING(#Rand_Num,N6),
                                         #Rand_Chr).
.     END CASE.
.  END LOOP.
END FILE.
END INPUT PROGRAM.
LIST.

List
|-----------------------------|---------------------------|
|Output Created               |09-FEB-2007 14:16:29       |
|-----------------------------|---------------------------|
LINE_NUM password

      1   324996Q
      2   472388M
      3   747540O
      4   148345X
      5   890948G

Number of cases read:  5    Number of cases listed:  5