Description

The scaling algorithm used internally by MT_RAND_PHP causes undefined CPU-dependent behavior.

This breaks compatibility of the MT random number sequences generated across platforms. (Its properties as a random number are already broken because it is improperly used.)

The following code:

mt_srand(1234, MT_RAND_PHP);
echo mt_rand(PHP_INT_MIN, PHP_INT_MAX) . PHP_EOL;

Resulted in this output:

• i386: 0
• amd64: 0
• arm32v7: -1
• arm64v8: -1
• s390x: -1

Easily reproduced in QEMU's available Docker environment:

$ docker run --rm -it i386/php:7.4-cli -r 'mt_srand(1234, MT_RAND_PHP); echo mt_rand(PHP_INT_MIN, PHP_INT_MAX) . PHP_EOL;'
0
$ docker run --rm -it amd64/php:7.4-cli -r 'mt_srand(1234, MT_RAND_PHP); echo mt_rand(PHP_INT_MIN, PHP_INT_MAX) . PHP_EOL;'
0
$ docker run --rm -it arm32v7/php:7.4-cli -r 'mt_srand(1234, MT_RAND_PHP); echo mt_rand(PHP_INT_MIN, PHP_INT_MAX) . PHP_EOL;'
-1
$ docker run --rm -it arm64v8/php:7.4-cli -r 'mt_srand(1234, MT_RAND_PHP); echo mt_rand(PHP_INT_MIN, PHP_INT_MAX) . PHP_EOL;'
-1
$ docker run --rm -it s390x/php:7.4-cli -r 'mt_srand(1234, MT_RAND_PHP); echo mt_rand(PHP_INT_MIN, PHP_INT_MAX) . PHP_EOL;'
-1

But I expected this output instead:

This should probably be an error since it is beyond the range of getrandmax(), but should be unified to 0 or -1 for compatibility.

PHP Version

PHP 7.4.x (All supported version)

Operating System

Debian 11