$RANDOM ?

$RANDOM ?

[Atom Smasher]

from the man page:
   The values of RANDOM form an intentionally-repeatable pseudo-random 
sequence; subshells that reference RANDOM will result in identical 
pseudo-random values unless the value of RANDOM is referenced or seeded in 
the parent shell in between subshell invocations.

i'm curious about the "intentionally-repeatable" sequence. where would i 
find out more?


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Re: $RANDOM ?

[Peter Stephenson]

Atom Smasher wrote:
> from the man page:
>    The values of RANDOM form an intentionally-repeatable pseudo-random 
> sequence; subshells that reference RANDOM will result in identical 
> pseudo-random values unless the value of RANDOM is referenced or seeded in 
> the parent shell in between subshell invocations.
> 
> i'm curious about the "intentionally-repeatable" sequence. where would i 
> find out more?

It's the call rand() provided by the library and specified by C and
POSIX: http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/rand.html

-- 
Peter Stephenson <p.w.stephenson@ntlworld.com>
Web page now at http://homepage.ntlworld.com/p.w.stephenson/