Starting from Java 7 (or Android API Level 21 = 5.0+) you could directly use ThreadLocalRandom.current().nextLong(n)
(for 0 ≤ x < n) and ThreadLocalRandom.current().nextLong(m, n)
(for m ≤ x < n). See @Alex’s answer for detail.
If you are stuck with Java 6 (or Android 4.x) you need to use an external library (e.g. org.apache.commons.math3.random.RandomDataGenerator.getRandomGenerator().nextLong(0, n-1)
, see @mawaldne’s answer), or implement your own nextLong(n)
.
According to https://docs.oracle.com/javase/1.5.0/docs/api/java/util/Random.html nextInt
is implemented as
public int nextInt(int n) {
if (n<=0)
throw new IllegalArgumentException("n must be positive");
if ((n & -n) == n) // i.e., n is a power of 2
return (int)((n * (long)next(31)) >> 31);
int bits, val;
do {
bits = next(31);
val = bits % n;
} while(bits - val + (n-1) < 0);
return val;
}
So we may modify this to perform nextLong
:
long nextLong(Random rng, long n) {
// error checking and 2^x checking removed for simplicity.
long bits, val;
do {
bits = (rng.nextLong() << 1) >>> 1;
val = bits % n;
} while (bits-val+(n-1) < 0L);
return val;
}