From owner-freebsd-arch Tue Feb 27 10:34:14 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from mail.rpi.edu (mail.rpi.edu [128.113.100.7]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A36F637B719 for ; Tue, 27 Feb 2001 10:34:11 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from drosih@rpi.edu) Received: from [128.113.24.47] (gilead.acs.rpi.edu [128.113.24.47]) by mail.rpi.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id NAA77474; Tue, 27 Feb 2001 13:33:52 -0500 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: drosih@mail.rpi.edu Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <20010227144408.A34881@gurney.reilly.home> References: <20010226174852.B435@ringworld.oblivion.bg> <200102270317.UAA09690@usr05.primenet.com> <20010227144408.A34881@gurney.reilly.home> Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 13:33:50 -0500 To: "Andrew Reilly" , Terry Lambert From: Garance A Drosihn Subject: Re: rand.c patch for review (was: Re: cvs commit: ports/astro/xglobe/files patch-random) Cc: Peter Pentchev , "Andrey A. Chernov" , "Jacques A. Vidrine" , arch@FreeBSD.ORG, kris@obsecurity.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG 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