From: Morton Goldberg <m_goldberg@...>
Date: 2006-11-29T03:33:42+09:00
Subject: Re: rand random. You've got to be kidding

On Nov 28, 2006, at 12:51 PM, 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.

Can't reproduce your problem. #srand with no argument seems to seed  
the pseudo-random number generator with a different value on each  
call. For example:

<code>
srand
p Array.new(10) { rand(10) }
srand(1)
p Array.new(10) { rand(10) }
srand
p Array.new(10) { rand(10) }
srand(1)
p Array.new(10) { rand(10) }
srand
p Array.new(10) { rand(10) }
</code>

<results>
[7, 8, 8, 1, 8, 3, 5, 6, 5, 2]
[4, 9, 7, 9, 0, 1, 3, 9, 1, 2]
[8, 4, 0, 0, 0, 7, 7, 4, 4, 4]
[4, 9, 7, 9, 0, 1, 3, 9, 1, 2]
[3, 9, 2, 9, 8, 0, 1, 0, 5, 9
</results>

Can you show us the code that didn't work?

Regards, Morton

P.S. Concerning getting a numeric value out of Time:

<code>
Time.now.to_i
</code>