Date: Sun, 31 Mar 1996 13:20:26 +1000 From: Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au> To: ache@astral.msk.su, bde@zeta.org.au Cc: current@FreeBSD.org, davidg@Root.COM, imb@scgt.oz.au Subject: Re: random .. not so .. Message-ID: <199603310320.NAA08023@godzilla.zeta.org.au>
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>> >> >I plan to aply proposed fix, if nobody against. >> >> It needs more thought. >What thought exactly do you mean? Think about rereading Knuth :-). >Calling srandom(time() f.e.) is common case. Without this fix two >programs calling srandom in _different_ times produces very predictable >almost same sequences. This must be a poor way to initialize random(). First, time() isn't random. Second, srandom() isn't claimed to give a state that varies randomly with its arg. In fact, it doesn't. Third, and more fundamentally, only 2**32 of random()'s (more than) 2**69 states are reachable using srandom(). Bruce
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