From: Christopher Coleman-Smith <chris.colemansmith@...>
Date: 2006-11-29T03:11:34+09:00
Subject: Re: rand random. You've got to be kidding

why not seed it from /dev/random/ in C/++ you'd do something like this:

unsigned int seed
FILE *devrandom = fopen("/dev/random", "r");
fread(&seed,sizeof(seed),1,devrandom);

then pass the seed to rand, using the time itself is a bit dubious if 
you want a strong set of random numbers, not a good idea for statistical 
research / cryptography i fear.



Smgspices@aol.com wrote:
> Surely it must be possible to initialize rand with current date and time.  
> Documents seem to indicate this is done with rand(0) or srand with no value. I  
> have tried both methods and I get the same tired old sequence of numbers. I  
> would write my own random number generator except I don't know how to get a  
> numeric value out of Time.
>  
> Charles Gray
>
>