rand Generate a random value intrand intmin intmax If called without the optional min, max arguments rand returns a pseudo-random value between 0 and RAND_MAX. If you want a random number between 5 and 15 (inclusive), for example, use rand (5, 15). In older versions of PHP, you had to seed the random number generator before use with srand. Since 4.2.0 this is no longer necessary. In versions before 3.0.7 the meaning of max was range. To get the same results in these versions the short example should be rand (5, 11) to get a random number between 5 and 15. See also srand, getrandmax, and mt_rand.