random() is not

D. Mitchell don at allegra.UUCP
Tue Apr 17 08:55:50 AEST 1984


The random() function in the 4.2 release is quite poor.  It failed some
statistical tests that we did here, so we looked at the code and found
some subtle bugs.  What it is trying to do is sound, but the author
tried to be clever with pointers and messed up.  It is not, in fact,
evaluating the polynomial that is claimed in the little TV commercial
at the beginning of the source.



More information about the Comp.unix.wizards mailing list