Random Number Generation

Java provides a random number generation class java.util.Random. There are two Random constructors. The first takes as input nothing and the second takes as input a seed value. The easiest way to generate random numbers is with the nextInt method. It takes as input an int and generates a number between 0 (inclusive) and the specified number (exclusive). An example follows:

import java.util.Random;

class Test {

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        Random r = new Random();
        int randnum = r.nextInt(25);

    }
}

The example generates a number between 0 and 25. In this example, 0 may be generated by the random number generator, but 25 will not be generated.

Notice that the first line of code is import java.util.Random . This tells the compiler that the program will be using the Random class. If you omit this line, your program will not compile.

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