Date: Thu, 30 Jan 2003 17:11:24 +0000 (GMT) From: Jan Grant <Jan.Grant@bristol.ac.uk> To: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> Cc: Ruben de Groot <fbsd-q@bzerk.org>, Darren Pilgrim <dmp@pantherdragon.org>, Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr>, questions <questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Why no /dev/one? Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.44.0301301709490.13893-100000@mail.ilrt.bris.ac.uk> In-Reply-To: <15929.18601.542905.366283@guru.mired.org>
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On Thu, 30 Jan 2003, Mike Meyer wrote: > In <20030130151339.GA17486@ei.bzerk.org>, Ruben de Groot <fbsd-q@bzerk.org> typed: > > And while you're at it, what about /dev/yes and /dev/no to automate > > interactive scripts. Or, if you like the challenge, a /dev/fibonacci > > and a /dev/pi would be very welcome :) > > Yes, but is /dev/pi a suitable substite for /dev/random if you seek > far enough into it? Only if you don't tell anyone exactly how far you're seeking, and if you permit arbitrarily large file offsets. In that case, it's a source of randomness (in that an observer who didn't know the file offset couldn't predict with 100% accuracy the next digit) -- jan grant, ILRT, University of Bristol. http://www.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/ Tel +44(0)117 9287088 Fax +44 (0)117 9287112 http://ioctl.org/jan/ "Roger Penrose can never be convinced that this sentence is true." (If he doesn't get the joke, you can at least prove that he owes you money.) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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