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From: "G. Branden Robinson" <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com>
To: Alejandro Colomar <alx.manpages@gmail.com>
Cc: "Cristian Rodríguez" <crrodriguez@opensuse.org>,
	"Jonny Grant" <jg@jguk.org>,
	"Florian Weimer" <fweimer@redhat.com>,
	"Michael Kerrisk" <mtk.manpages@gmail.com>,
	linux-man <linux-man@vger.kernel.org>,
	"GNU C Library" <libc-alpha@sourceware.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Add example to rand.3
Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2022 18:00:10 -0600	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20221228000010.iyrekqdj6fi5sf7d@illithid> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <8bd20ea2-2031-173a-5b09-f6a74473ef8f@gmail.com>

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At 2022-12-28T00:33:13+0100, Alejandro Colomar wrote:
> The only problem with arc4random() is the lack of repeatability.  When
> testing a program with random data, you'll need repeatable results.
> For that, rand(3) Just Works.  When you want unpredictable results,
> you just seed it with some really random value, and you're fine.  You
> need to be careful to not introduce bias, but there's nothing better
> in libc.  It would be nice if libc provided a rand_uniform(3) variant
> of rand(3), BTW.

Permit me to counsel against that last proposed name.  In probability
theory "uniform" is already widely and well understood to indicate the
nature of the distribution.  A "uniform" distribution is one in which
each outcome is precisely equally likely.

rand_deterministic() would get the right idea across but is lengthy.

Regards,
Branden

P.S. I asked Bertrand to tag groff 1.23.0.rc2 earlier today.  Happy
     belated Boxing Day.  ;-)

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  reply	other threads:[~2022-12-28  0:00 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 26+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
     [not found] <105835f5-359c-2646-f609-e73459ee2d3b@jguk.org>
2022-12-26 22:29 ` Alejandro Colomar
2022-12-27 13:07   ` Cristian Rodríguez
2022-12-27 23:33     ` Alejandro Colomar
2022-12-28  0:00       ` G. Branden Robinson [this message]
2022-12-28  0:41         ` Alejandro Colomar
2022-12-28 12:21           ` Cristian Rodríguez
2022-12-30 18:15             ` Joseph Myers
2022-12-30 18:20               ` Alejandro Colomar
2022-12-30 18:50                 ` Joseph Myers
2022-12-30 18:58                   ` Alejandro Colomar
2022-12-30 19:11               ` Cristian Rodríguez
2022-12-30 21:08                 ` Joseph Myers
2022-12-30 21:15                   ` Internal organization of "the implementation" (was: [PATCH] Add example to rand.3) Alejandro Colomar
2022-12-30 21:50                     ` Joseph Myers
2022-12-27 21:37   ` [PATCH] Add example to rand.3 Jonny Grant
2022-12-27 23:11     ` Alejandro Colomar
2022-12-28 20:51       ` Jonny Grant
2022-12-28 20:56         ` Alejandro Colomar
2022-12-28 21:03           ` Alejandro Colomar
2022-12-28 21:04             ` Alejandro Colomar
2022-12-28 21:25               ` Jonny Grant
2022-12-28 21:32                 ` Alejandro Colomar
2022-12-28 21:04           ` Cristian Rodríguez
2022-12-28 21:11             ` Alejandro Colomar
2022-12-28 21:19               ` Jonny Grant
2022-12-28 21:18             ` Alejandro Colomar

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