Ilya Zakharevich on Thu, 1 Oct 1998 13:41:14 -0400 (EDT)


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Re: limit number of random


Karim BELABAS writes:
> random() never produced anything bigger than 2^31-1. But I agree this could
> be useful. The following patch does what you want (and improves a bit the
> previous version even if the bound is < 2^31). Apply it to 2.0.11, or wait
> for 2.0.12 to be released.

But it is not "random" any more.  There is no point in setting
lesser-significance chunks to non-0, since they are calculatable based
on higher-significance chunks anyway.

THe simplest solution is to have a separate linear-congruence
generator for higher precisions, with data being GENs, and these
numbers 1000000000000654397 computed at runtime.

Or (better) get a free 2048-independent-(bytes? bits?) generator from
the pseudo-random webpage (if it deserves the trouble).

Ilya