Re: preliminary patch for zsh/random module

[Bart Schaefer <schaefer@brasslantern.com>]

On Sun, Oct 23, 2022 at 7:57 PM Clinton Bunch <cdb_zsh@zentaur.org> wrote:
>
> On 10/23/2022 9:01 PM, Bart Schaefer wrote:
> > * Typo in the introductory comment.
> I'm pretty sure I've since found and changed all the instances of
> Zoltan's name.

I was referring to the spelling of "randome".

> > Actual question:  What's the use case for returning or printing a
> > block of random bytes?  Why does this need to be a builtin?
> Mostly because I see constructs like read -k6 -u3 3</dev/urandom

... because?

> it would be nice to initialize an array with random numbers without
> having to use a loop to access SRANDOM n times.

But you're not filling an array with random numbers, you're filling a
string (scalar) with random bytes.

> > Suggestion:  Treat SRANDOM like SECONDS, in that you can change the
> > type from integer to floating-point.  Then maybe the zrandom() math
> > function isn't needed?
> That would seem confusing to me, and too easy to forget which state you
> left it in.

You make it local so you're not leaving it.

() {
 print $SECONDS;
 () {
  local -F SECONDS
  print $SECONDS
 }
 print $SECONDS
}
56
0.0000050000
56

> zrandom was meant to be a replacement for rand48

OK.