[ruby-talk:01063] Re: rand() / drand48()

In message "[ruby-talk:01061] Re: rand() / drand48()"
    on 00/01/07, GOTO Kentaro <[e-mail]> writes:

|But your patch is not suitable because a random generator function
|should return same series for each process unless an initializer was
|explicitly called by a user.  It's a non-documented traditional
|behavior of rand() family.  So, you should not initialize by a clock
|value implicitly.

But drand48() family functions, which Ruby uses for most of the case,
do not have this undocumented behavior.  Here are some questions.

  * drand48() requires srand48() before calling it.  So we have to
    supply some constant (?) seed to srand48() for uninitialized
    rand() invocation, if we want this behavior.  Do you think
    arbitrary integer (say 42) would be sufficient?

  * Perl seems to give up this behavior.  Does Ruby really need this
    behavoir?

							matz.