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From: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: random numbers in awk?
Message-ID: <7807@auspex.auspex.com>
Date: 14 May 91 17:13:37 GMT
Article-I.D.: auspex.7807
References: <26019@adm.brl.mil> <1991Apr24.041134.14519@athena.mit.edu> <1136@mwtech.UUCP>
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
Lines: 14

>SysV User's should note that they have a similar program, called random.

Well, *some* S5 users, anyway.  As I remember, it was in "/usr/games" in
S3 or in early S5; the games appear to have gone away in a later S5
release, alas.

>It's range of output values is restricted to 0..255 (the upper limit must
>be specified as a calling argument).

If you're thinking of the same "random" I'm thinking of (I'm thinking of
the one I picked up from some S5 release and put into SunOS), that's
only the case if you use the "-e" flag to get it to return a random exit
status.  Its "normal" mode is to act as a filter, randomly choosing
which lines of the standard input to write to the standard output....