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Date:      Tue, 27 Feb 2001 13:33:50 -0500
From:      Garance A Drosihn <drosih@rpi.edu>
To:        "Andrew Reilly" <areilly@bigpond.net.au>, Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com>
Cc:        Peter Pentchev <roam@orbitel.bg>, "Andrey A. Chernov" <ache@nagual.pp.ru>, "Jacques A. Vidrine" <n@nectar.com>, arch@FreeBSD.ORG, kris@obsecurity.org
Subject:   Re: rand.c patch for review (was: Re: cvs commit: ports/astro/xglobe/files patch-random)
Message-ID:  <p05010405b6c1a3095d31@[128.113.24.47]>
In-Reply-To: <20010227144408.A34881@gurney.reilly.home>
References:  <20010226174852.B435@ringworld.oblivion.bg> <200102270317.UAA09690@usr05.primenet.com> <20010227144408.A34881@gurney.reilly.home>

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At 2:44 PM +1100 2/27/01, Andrew Reilly wrote:
>That sort of assumption is simply insane, and frankly I don't
>believe you for a minute.  (Well, OK: never underestimate
>stupidity, I guess...)
>
>Sure, rand() should produce the same results after successive
>calls to srand() with the same seed: that's what the spec says.
>Nothing anywhere has ever said that these _sequences_ should be
>portable between machines.

However, it is reasonable to assume the sequences WILL be the
the same across time on a single platform, and the proposed
change will be breaking that.  In fact, it is "simply insane"
to claim that it is "fine" if the sequences are not repeatable
over time on a given platform, because there would then be
no reason at all to have a way to get a "repeatable sequence
of random numbers".

-- 
Garance Alistair Drosehn            =   gad@eclipse.acs.rpi.edu
Senior Systems Programmer           or  gad@freebsd.org
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute    or  drosih@rpi.edu

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