Initializing Perl's rand
Patrick Cole
z at amused.net
Tue Jun 25 02:08:18 EST 2002
Mon, Jun 24, 2002 at 11:57:23PM +1000, Michael James wrote:
> Can anyone help me out here.
>
> I am using rand in perl.
> The book says it should get initialized (call srand) on the first invocation.
> Supposed to be true on any version 5.004 or after, and I'm using 5.6.1
>
> But my script just took the exact same random walk 3 times running,
> and I'm suspicious. I need runs to differ.
>
> Does perl initialize to the same seed each run?
> How can I make it get a different seed each run?
>
> The script is going to have to run under MacPerl
> so I don't want to to to unixy a thing and read /dev/urandom
>
> For now I'm calling srand with
> the process id raised to the number of seconds
> it took for the user to answer the starting questions.
>
> Any better ideas?
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