From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Oct 7 13:19:49 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id NAA25279 for hackers-outgoing; Mon, 7 Oct 1996 13:19:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: from agora.rdrop.com (root@agora.rdrop.com [199.2.210.241]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id NAA25259 for ; Mon, 7 Oct 1996 13:19:46 -0700 (PDT) Received: from irz301.inf.tu-dresden.de by agora.rdrop.com with smtp (Smail3.1.29.1 #17) id m0vAM8N-0008z2C; Mon, 7 Oct 96 13:18 PDT Received: from sax.sax.de (sax.sax.de [193.175.26.33]) by irz301.inf.tu-dresden.de (8.6.12/8.6.12-s1) with ESMTP id VAA06663 for ; Mon, 7 Oct 1996 21:19:40 +0200 Received: (from uucp@localhost) by sax.sax.de (8.6.12/8.6.12-s1) with UUCP id VAA14485 for freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org; Mon, 7 Oct 1996 21:19:40 +0200 Received: (from j@localhost) by uriah.heep.sax.de (8.7.5/8.6.9) id VAA15735 for freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org; Mon, 7 Oct 1996 21:18:23 +0200 (MET DST) From: J Wunsch Message-Id: <199610071918.VAA15735@uriah.heep.sax.de> Subject: Re: I plan to change random() for -current (was Re: rand() and random()) To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org (FreeBSD hackers) Date: Mon, 7 Oct 1996 21:18:22 +0200 (MET DST) In-Reply-To: <1877.844713458@critter.tfs.com> from Poul-Henning Kamp at "Oct 7, 96 08:37:38 pm" X-Phone: +49-351-2012 669 X-PGP-Fingerprint: DC 47 E6 E4 FF A6 E9 8F 93 21 E0 7D F9 12 D6 4E X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL17 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk As Poul-Henning Kamp wrote: > And I think we should actually add a function that would seed it > from /dev/random if people want random numbers, for instance > for games. Yep. I wouldn't break the fact that it is pseudo-random by default (and if i've got the ANSI reprint that can be found in K&R II right in mind, this pseudo-randomness is the required behaviour), but an additional function to provide a better random seed than plain `time' is would be fine. -- cheers, J"org joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)