From: Smgspices@...
Date: 2006-11-29T03:55:40+09:00
Subject: Re: rand random. You've got to be kidding

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In a message dated 11/28/2006 11:47:44 A.M. US Mountain Standard Tim,  
drbrain@segment7.net writes:

>  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.

On windows I think there is no  way to seed from /dev/urandom, so you  
get seeded by some default  value.  Instead the seed is composed of  
the current time in  seconds and microseconds and the pid.



It could be that the problem exists because I am running windows. I'd run  it 
in Linux except I couldn't figure out how to get Ruby to work in Linux. I am  
a Linux newby as well as a Ruby newby :-). The problem also might be in the  
file.sort{rand} method.

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