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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