How to generate secure random strings in golang with crypto/rand.

main.go

// License: MIT
package main

import (
	"crypto/rand"
	"fmt"
	"math/big"
)

// GenerateRandomASCIIString returns a securely generated random ASCII string.
// It reads random numbers from crypto/rand and searches for printable characters.
// It will return an error if the system's secure random number generator fails to
// function correctly, in which case the caller must not continue.
func GenerateRandomASCIIString(length int) (string, error) {
	result := ""
	for {
		if len(result) >= length {
			return result, nil
		}
		num, err := rand.Int(rand.Reader, big.NewInt(int64(127)))
		if err != nil {
			return "", err
		}
		n := num.Int64()
		// Make sure that the number/byte/letter is inside
		// the range of printable ASCII characters (excluding space and DEL)
		if n > 32 && n < 127 {
			result += string(n)
		}
	}
}

func main() {
	length := 20
	random, err := GenerateRandomASCIIString(length)
	if err != nil {
		panic(err)
	}
	fmt.Println(random)
	// Output: 0_tRSWiyJ=b4(x^6TE<q
}

main_compare.go

// License: MIT
package main

import (
	"crypto/rand"
	"fmt"
	"math/big"
	"sort"
	"strings"

	"gonum.org/v1/plot"
	"gonum.org/v1/plot/plotter"
	"gonum.org/v1/plot/plotutil"
	"gonum.org/v1/plot/vg"
)

const iterations = 1000 * 100

type generate func(int) (string, error)

func GenerateRandomStringEven(length int) (pass string, err error) {
	for {
		if length <= lenString(pass) {
			return pass, nil
		}
		num, err := rand.Int(rand.Reader, big.NewInt(int64(127)))
		if err != nil {
			return "", err
		}
		n := num.Int64()
		if n > 32 && n < 127 {
			pass += string(n)
		}
	}
}

//const letters = "0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz-"

const letters = "!\"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\\]^_`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~"

func GenerateRandomStringUneven(length int) (string, error) {
	bytes := make([]byte, length)
	if _, err := rand.Read(bytes); err != nil {
		return "", err
	}
	for i, b := range bytes {
		bytes[i] = letters[b%byte(len(letters))]
	}
	return string(bytes), nil
}

func main() {
	fmt.Println("Calculating even distribution of random characters…")
	even := measureDistribution(iterations, GenerateRandomStringEven)
	print(even)
	draw(even, "Even Distribution", "dist-even.png")
	fmt.Println("\n\nCalculating uneven distribution of (nearly) random characters…")
	uneven := measureDistribution(iterations, GenerateRandomStringUneven)
	print(uneven)
	draw(uneven, "Uneven Distribution", "dist-uneven.png")
}

func measureDistribution(iterations int, fn generate) map[string]int {
	dist := make(map[string]int)
	for index := 1; index <= iterations; index++ {
		// status output to cli
		if index%1000 == 0 {
			fmt.Printf("\r%d / %d", index, iterations)
		}
		raw, err := fn(100)
		if err != nil {
			panic(err)
		}
		for _, s := range raw {
			c := string(s)
			i := dist[c]
			dist[c] = i + 1
		}
	}
	return dist
}

func draw(distribution map[string]int, title, filename string) {
	keys, values := orderMap(distribution)
	group := plotter.Values{}
	for _, v := range values {
		group = append(group, float64(v))
	}

	p, err := plot.New()
	if err != nil {
		panic(err)
	}
	p.Title.Text = title
	p.Y.Label.Text = "N"

	bars, err := plotter.NewBarChart(group, vg.Points(4))
	if err != nil {
		panic(err)
	}
	bars.LineStyle.Width = vg.Length(0)
	bars.Color = plotutil.Color(0)

	p.Add(bars)
	p.NominalX(keys...)

	if err := p.Save(300*vg.Millimeter, 150*vg.Millimeter, filename); err != nil {
		panic(err)
	}
}

func orderMap(m map[string]int) (keys []string, values []int) {
	keys = []string{}
	values = []int{}
	for k := range m {
		keys = append(keys, k)
	}
	sort.Strings(keys)
	for _, key := range keys {
		values = append(values, m[key])
	}
	return keys, values
}

func print(m map[string]int) {
	fmt.Println("\n\nCharacter Distribution")
	keys, values := orderMap(m)
	for i, key := range keys {
		fmt.Println(key, "\t", values[i])
	}
	fmt.Println("\nAlphabet:", strings.Join(keys, ""))
}

// lenString returns the amount of valid characters instead of the number of bytes (like len()).
func lenString(s string) int {
	return len([]rune(s))
}

Actually you don't need a big.Int just to generate random numbers between 32 and 126.
You also don't want to pressurize the GC by doing a lot of s += string(i).
Even further, you don't want to do UTF-8 encoding each time by just calling string(i).

This is my implementation:

import "crypto/rand"

func GenerateRandomASCIIString(length int) (string, error) {
	result := make([]byte, length)
	_, err := rand.Read(result)
	if err != nil {
		return "", err
	}
	for i := 0; i < length; i++ {
		result[i] &= 0x7F
		for result[i] < 32 || result[i] == 127 {
			_, err = rand.Read(result[i : i+1])
			if err != nil {
				return "", err
			}
			result[i] &= 0x7F
		}
	}
	return string(result), nil
}