From owner-freebsd-arch  Sun Feb 25  8:26:42 2001
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From: Steve Kargl <sgk@troutmask.apl.washington.edu>
Message-Id: <200102251626.f1PGQAe39000@troutmask.apl.washington.edu>
Subject: Re: cvs commit: ports/astro/xglobe/files patch-random
In-Reply-To: <20010225005813.A29124@mollari.cthul.hu> from Kris Kennaway at "Feb
 25, 2001 00:58:13 am"
To: Kris Kennaway <kris@obsecurity.org>
Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2001 08:26:10 -0800 (PST)
Cc: arch@FreeBSD.ORG
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Kris Kennaway wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 25, 2001 at 09:52:40AM +0100, Erik Trulsson wrote:
> 
> > No, the algorithm of rand() is not standardized in the C standard.
> > 
> > OTOH, there is an example of a portable implementation of rand() in the
> > C standard and FreeBSD uses the same algorithm (as does many other
> > implementations of rand()). This is probably what you were thinking of.
> > 
> > As long as rand() and srand() behaves as describe in the man-page for
> > rand(3) they confirm to the C standard. (Provided that RAND_MAX is at 
> > least 32767.)
> 
> That's good to know.  I'll look at replacing it with something better
> that has the same semantics, so we solve this problem at the source.
> 
> Kris

Kris,

If you're looking for a candidate algorithm, you might
consider the Mersenne Twister (MT).

http://www.math.keio.ac.jp/~matumoto/emt.html

MT is for Monte Carlos type work.  It isn't crypto strong.

-- 
Steve

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