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 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message
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