"Andrey A. Chernov" writes: > On Mon, Feb 03, 2003 at 00:17:35 +1100, Tim Robbins wrote: > > > > I believe that this change just moves the "bad" seed to 123459876; after > > calling srand() with that seed, each call to rand() returns 0. > > Yes. Nothing better is possible for this formulae and this is documented > in algorithm, some value must be excluded. Excluding 0 is bad only because > srand(0) is commonly used and srand(123459876) is not.
This means that this routine has a chance of failing spectacularly. We should not use it. > Ragarding to old formulae, the question is: what is worse, generate > non-random lover bits everytime (old variant) or exclude one seed value > (new variant)? Neither. New RNG is needed. > Of course formulae can be changed to some another algorithm, but keep in > mind that rand() must be simple and speedy. Now used variant is most > simpler, others are much more complex. RC4 is fast. RC4 is simple. Any objections? :-) M -- Mark Murray iumop ap!sdn w,I idlaH To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
