From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Oct 7 13:51:30 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id NAA27462 for hackers-outgoing; Mon, 7 Oct 1996 13:51:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from phaeton.artisoft.com (phaeton.Artisoft.COM [198.17.250.211]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id NAA27412; Mon, 7 Oct 1996 13:51:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from terry@localhost) by phaeton.artisoft.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id NAA14959; Mon, 7 Oct 1996 13:47:25 -0700 From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199610072047.NAA14959@phaeton.artisoft.com> Subject: Re: I plan to change random() for -current (was Re: rand() and random()) To: ache@nagual.ru (=?KOI8-R?Q?=E1=CE=C4=D2=C5=CA_=FE=C5=D2=CE=CF=D7?=) Date: Mon, 7 Oct 1996 13:47:25 -0700 (MST) Cc: terry@lambert.org, wollman@lcs.mit.edu, joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org, current@FreeBSD.org, bde@zeta.org.au In-Reply-To: <199610071937.XAA04969@nagual.ru> from "=?KOI8-R?Q?=E1=CE=C4=D2=C5=CA_=FE=C5=D2=CE=CF=D7?=" at Oct 7, 96 11:37:18 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] 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 > > Here we have an issue where the technical merit is relative: it depends > > on if you depends on the "random" behaviour" or if you depends on the > > "pseudo" behaviour. This is the main ideological debate. > > Your "pseudo" idea is technically wrong. > Standard says that ([...] my comments) > "THIS function [NOT all possible > old and future implementations of this function] produce the > same sequence for same seed". I think you are having a semantics misunderstanding of the declarative English "this". The "this" on the manual page refers to implementation, not interface. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.