Dave Korn wrote:
I didn't say "Pseudo random number generation". I said "Random number generation".
which once again has nothing whatever to do with non-determinism. TO illustrate this, suppose I have a language which has sets of integers. I have an operator ARB whose semantics is to select an element of such a set non-deterministically. It is a fine implementation to always return the smallest number in the set (of course no legitimate program can rely on this artifact of the implementation). It would not be at all fine to use this implementation for the RAND operator that selects a random element from the set. Many people mix these concepts up, it always causes trouble. I once remember a very senior member of the CS community (I will keep the name to myself), during a discussion of Ada semantics being dismayed at the overhead required for non-deterministic selection of an open SELECT alternative, since he assumed it meant that a random number generator would have to be used :-)
