Seems that in the review so far, Fabien has focused mainly in the mathematical properties of the new random number generation. That seems perfectly fine, but no comment has been made about the chosen UI for the feature. Per the few initial messages in the thread, in the patch as submitted you ask for a gaussian random number by using \setgaussian, and exponential via \setexp. Is this the right UI? Currently you get an evenly distributed number with \setrandom. There is nothing that makes it obvious on \setgaussian by itself that it produces random numbers. Perhaps we should simply add a new argument to \setrandom, instead of creating new commands for each distribution? I would guess that, in the future, we're going to want other distributions as well.
Not sure what it would look like; perhaps \setrandom foo 1 10 gaussian or \setrandom foo 1 10 dist=gaussian or \setrandom(gaussian) foo 1 10 or \setrandom(dist=gaussian) foo 1 10 I think we could easily support \set distrib gaussian \setrandom(dist=:distrib) foo 1 10 so that it can be changed for a bunch of commands easily. Or maybe I'm going overboard, everybody else is happy with \setgaussian, and should just use that? -- Álvaro Herrera http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/ PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training & Services -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
