--------8<----------- Has anyone else noticed this? And has anyone at ActiveState noticed it and if so is anything being done about it? What I'm talking about is the rand() function that doesn't seem to be so random after all. Atleast 4 times now, over a multi day period, it has spit out the exact same sequence of numbers. The script is a mod_perl app that uses rand to generate a random temp file name. If the name already exists it tries again, using rand(), 10 times. After that it dies. Now, it seems that a random sequence will never have the same 10+ digit number twice except maybe sporadically at large intervals. This rand is acting like it is just regurgitating values from a list! I put in a call to srand to reinitialize it but it's yet to be seen whether that will fix it. Like on Monday it might give 1, 2, 3, 4 and then on Wednesday it might spit out 1, 2, 3, 4 again! The app is not heavily used. --------8<-----------
Depends what youre after - Whats wrong with int(rand($$)), or even int(rand(time)) for slightly higher magnitudes? Looking at your post suggests you want much lower integers though. my $random = $min + int rand($max - $min + 1); # always satisfies my needs Note that perlfaq4 dictates the use of srand for perl versions < 5.004 - what's your perl version? Googling for random noise number generators yielded http://www.random.org which seems to be the acme for your suspicions. Cheers, Just in _______________________________________________ Perl-Win32-Users mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe: http://listserv.ActiveState.com/mailman/mysubs
