Description: ------------ There are two things wrong with str_shuffle: 1) It shouldn't seed mt_srand. For PHP < 4.2, people should be seeding the random number generators in the main program, and for PHP > 4.2, it's unnecessary (actually bad on a fast machine because it may reseed within the same microsecond). 2) Appending to the result string ($new) causes quadratic behavior. Either append to an array and implode() it on return, or create a string and swap characters inside it. Here's code that swaps characters (drop-in replacement for the function's body). Warning: Untested. $result = (string) $str; for ($i = strlen ($str) - 1; $i >= 0; $i--) { // Swap random character from [0..$i] to position [$i]. $j = mt_rand (0, $i); $tmp = $str [$i]; $str [$i] = $str [$j]; $str [$j] = $tmp; } return $result;

Thank you very much for the report, sorry we took so long to reply. This fix will be in CVS soon.

Hope you fixed my mistake. (The loop should be reading and updating $result instead of $str.)