Path: utzoo!attcan!telly!lethe!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jpl-devvax!lwall
From: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: random numbers?
Message-ID: <11422@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Date: 13 Feb 91 17:38:00 GMT
References: <16698@venera.isi.edu> <3#3Gz8.j@cs.psu.edu> <292@kyzyl.mi.org>
Reply-To: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
Lines: 18

In article <292@kyzyl.mi.org> tkacik@kyzyl.mi.org (Tom Tkacik) writes:
: In article <3#3Gz8.j@cs.psu.edu>, flee@cs.psu.edu (Felix Lee) writes:
: > >Is there some problem with perl's srand and rand functions?
: 
: > makes the problem less apparent.  But LCRGs suffer from many flaws.
: > Avoid rand() if you want good random numbers.
: 
: Would it be difficult to put into the Config script, a check to see if
: either random(BSD) or lrand48(SYSV) exist, and to allow Perl to use them?
: Both of these are supposed to be much better random number
: generators than rand().

Well, you can probably get away with -Drand=random -Dsrand=srandom.
(Similarly for lrand48 and srand48, I suspect.)  It'll run a bit slower.
And some of the JAPH scripts won't work.  Not that those JAPHs were
portable in the first place...

Larry