Re: External entropy pool for random number generator

On 11/13/06, Yukihiro Matsumoto <[e-mail]> wrote:
> I am not sure I understand.  By your patch, if you specify something
> that responds to "read", rand() reads 4 byte integer and call srand()
> for each time, right?  In that case, what the difference from reading
> from /dev/random directly, if we assume quality of randomness from
> /dev/random?  I'm sure it is worth allowing the following
>
>   srand(open("/dev/random"))
>   loop do
>     p rand(0x1000)
>   end
>
> instead of
>
>   open("/dev/random") do |f|
>     loop do
>       srand(read(4).unpack("L")) rescue nil
>       p rand(0x1000)
>     end
>   end
>
> the former is shorter indeed.  But it seems more difficult to read the
> author's intention.  Is this useful in cryptography field?
It allow you specify entropy pool once(in platform specific way) and
use it anywhere.