Generating a random alphanumeric sequence

[dav3]

Howdy folks, was wondering if anyone could assist me in a better method for generating a alphanumeric sequence of 6 characters/digits. The method I am currently using gives me a random license plate number for a project I am working on. But I am unsatisfied with the results I am getting. Here is my current method, it works but like I said there has to be a better way of doing it.

public static String plate()
{
    int x = 6;
    char[] plate = new char[x];
    int c  = 'A';            
    for(int p = 0; p < 6; p++)
    {
        int vehiclePlate = 0 + (int) (Math.random()* 6);
        switch(vehiclePlate)
        {
            case 0: c = '0' +  (int)(Math.random() * 10); break;
            case 1: c = 'A' +  (int)(Math.random() * 26); break;
        }
        plate[p] = (char)c;
    }
    return new String(plate);
}
 

Any help, suggestions or links to any relevant info is appreciated. Thanks.

[Ganon11]

Umm, the method you have looks perfectly fine, so why not use it?

An alternative would be to create a character array holding the alphabet and numbers 0-9. Then you could build your string by adding random characters from the array.

[dav3]

Umm, the method you have looks perfectly fine, so why not use it?

An alternative would be to create a character array holding the alphabet and numbers 0-9. Then you could build your string by adding random characters from the array.

The results I am getting are:

AAAAAW
AAACCA
AAAAAA
AAAAXA

ETC..... they all are not exactly like that. And once every 20 times or so I get results that are satisfactory to me. I will try your alternate method. TY.

[Ganon11]

Ahh...you hadn't mentioned the part where it wasn't working very well ;)

The problem is, you generate random numbers between 0 and 5 to make a character, but you only test the cases 0 and 1. If you added the final 4 case statements, this would work perfectly well.

[dav3]

Ahh...you hadn't mentioned the part where it wasn't working very well ;)

The problem is, you generate random numbers between 0 and 5 to make a character, but you only test the cases 0 and 1. If you added the final 4 case statements, this would work perfectly well.

Wow that worked so well.

*astonished*

Ty Ganon.

[Ganon11]

No problems, glad to help!