[SWLUG] creation of temporary files/directories

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after failing to find a linux equivalent to winimage ,i'm doing a lot of 
messing with disk images at the mo, i've decided that i can avoid all the 
long winded manual mounting of multiple images by writing a script that will 
create a temp mount point, mount the image and display it in a file manager,
i can then create a context menu entry for image files in kde
but - to start i need to know how to get a script to create a temp dir and 
then reference it later, i can't specify the dir name cos i will be mounting 
more than one image at a time, using the same script (hopefully),
i had a go playing with /dev/random but didn't achieve anything i liked
any ideas how to generate a small semi-random string in bash?

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-- 
"...[Arthur] leapt to his feet like an author hearing the 
phone ring..." 

-- Who says that the character of Arthur isn't 
autobiographical?