rand() function not working as expected (nested within foreach())?

The idea is that a max and a minimum value are posted, and then a random number between the two is generated.

For example, $mins = array(30,40,50,60) and $maxs = array(40,50,60,70), and then my code:

foreach($mins as $minkey => $maxval) {
    foreach($maxs as $maxkey => $maxval) {
            $hits[$maxkey] = rand($minval,$maxval);
    }
}

If I then var_dump($mins), var_dump($maxs) and var_dump($hits), I get:

array(4) { [1]=> string(2) "30" [2]=> string(2) "40" [3]=> string(2) "50" [4]=> string(2) "60" } array(4) { [1]=> string(2) "40" [2]=> string(2) "50" [3]=> string(2) "60" [4]=> string(2) "70" } array(4) { [1]=> int(27) [2]=> int(36) [3]=> int(19) [4]=> int(41) }

I thought the fact that $maxs and $mins contained string values, while $hits containing integers (i.e. rand() requires intege开发者_高级运维r inputs ?) might be the issue so I updated my loop to become:

foreach($mins as $minkey => $minval) {
    foreach($maxs as $maxkey => $maxval) {
        $minval = (int)$minval;
        $maxval = (int)$maxval;
            $hits[$maxkey] = rand($minval,$maxval);
    }
}

But on var_dump($mins), var_dump($maxs) and var_dump($hits), this was dumped:

array(4) { [1]=> string(2) "30" [2]=> string(2) "40" [3]=> string(2) "50" [4]=> string(2) "60" } array(4) { [1]=> string(2) "40" [2]=> string(2) "50" [3]=> string(2) "60" [4]=> string(2) "70" } array(4) { [1]=> int(0) [2]=> int(47) [3]=> int(0) [4]=> int(55) }

Does anyone have any idea why this isn't working as expected?

Any thoughts/answers/comments would be very much appreciated :)!

Do you want to do that? if yes, you can't have one loop in another...

for($i = 1; $i <= sizeof($mins); $i++) {
  $hits[$i] = rand($mins[$i], $maxs[$i]);
}

For one you're overwriting your variables:

foreach($mins as $minkey => $maxval) {
    foreach($maxs as $maxkey => $maxval) {
            $hits[$maxkey] = rand($minval,$maxval);
    }
}

I'm assuming is supposed to be:

foreach($mins as $minkey => $minval) {
    foreach($maxs as $maxkey => $maxval) {
            $hits[$maxkey] = rand($minval,$maxval);
    }
}

Don't know what the expected result is but try this :

for ($i=0, $len = count($mins); $i < $len; $i++) {
    $hits[$i] = rand($mins[$i], $maxs[$i]);
}

It looks like you've got a typo with your first foreach loop, it should be

foreach($mins as $minkey => $minval)

This is causing an E_NOTICE error to be thrown and also prevents rand from working since minval doesn't exist. It's always a good idea to have error_reporting set to show notices in development which you can easily do via adding this at the start of your code:

error_reporting(E_ALL);

See php error reporting for more information