How to create a random string in standard shell on hp-ux

Question

I need to create a shell script or a command that will produce random string, something like this:

date | md5sum

but it needs to work on default hp-ux installation, which doesn't contain any md5sum, there is neither /dev/random or /dev/urandom

Someone has an idea if that is even possible and if yes, how?

Answer 1

If you have BASH OR ksh you can use $RANDOM variable:

rand=$RANDOM