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https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LANG-806?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:all-tabpanel
 ]

Sebb updated LANG-806:
----------------------

    Description: 
An infinite loop can result if the selection process never returns a char that 
passes the validation test.

This can occur if the subset specified by the start and end characters does not 
contain any valid characters.

For example:

RandomStringUtils.random(3, 5, 10, true, true); // 1

RandomStringUtils.random(3, 56192, 56319, false, false); // 2

There's also the case where only surrogates are allowed, but the buffer is not 
an even number of characters, for example:

RandomStringUtils.random(3, 56320, 57343, false, false); // 3

The second example is easy to detect, but in general it does not seem easy to 
determine in advance if the subset contains any valid characters - except by 
evaluating all the possible char values. This would be expensive if the subset 
range is large.

One possibility is to count the total number of loops (or retries), and throw 
an error if it exceeds a given value. Or count the number of consecutive 
retries.
In both cases the threshold value must be set high enough to allow for the 
cases where the allowable char range contains only a small proportion of valid 
characters. 

In the case of digits only, the default allowable range is currently set to 
digits + letters, so the proportion of valid chars is 10/90 i.e. approx 11%.

A minimum proportion of 1% or 0.1% would be necessary to reduce the number of 
false positives.

  was:
If numbers == true or digits == true, then an infinite loop can result if the 
selection process never returns a char that passes the validation test.

This can occur with

RandomStringUtils.random(1, -1, 1, true, true)

because the gap is 2, i.e. random.nextInt(gap) + start == 0

This is trivial to fix; the code should check that start >=0 and end > start 
(unless start==end==0).

It can also occur if the provided char array or array subset does not contain 
any valid chars.

    
> RandomStringUtils can enter infinite loop if chosen char does not meet 
> letter/digit requirements
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: LANG-806
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LANG-806
>             Project: Commons Lang
>          Issue Type: Bug
>    Affects Versions: 2.6, 3.1
>            Reporter: Sebb
>            Assignee: Sebb
>
> An infinite loop can result if the selection process never returns a char 
> that passes the validation test.
> This can occur if the subset specified by the start and end characters does 
> not contain any valid characters.
> For example:
> RandomStringUtils.random(3, 5, 10, true, true); // 1
> RandomStringUtils.random(3, 56192, 56319, false, false); // 2
> There's also the case where only surrogates are allowed, but the buffer is 
> not an even number of characters, for example:
> RandomStringUtils.random(3, 56320, 57343, false, false); // 3
> The second example is easy to detect, but in general it does not seem easy to 
> determine in advance if the subset contains any valid characters - except by 
> evaluating all the possible char values. This would be expensive if the 
> subset range is large.
> One possibility is to count the total number of loops (or retries), and throw 
> an error if it exceeds a given value. Or count the number of consecutive 
> retries.
> In both cases the threshold value must be set high enough to allow for the 
> cases where the allowable char range contains only a small proportion of 
> valid characters. 
> In the case of digits only, the default allowable range is currently set to 
> digits + letters, so the proportion of valid chars is 10/90 i.e. approx 11%.
> A minimum proportion of 1% or 0.1% would be necessary to reduce the number of 
> false positives.

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