ATTENTION: random broken

From: Andrew Joseph Kompanek <ak10+_at_andrew.cmu.edu>
Date: Sun, 7 May 1995 00:02:53 -0400 (EDT)

I was preparing some random inputs for a simulation when I realized
some peculiarly unrandom results. I soon realized that STk uses
the stdlib rand() function which is known to be broken (at least on most
Unix's). Among other problems, it *CYCLES* every n calls when
n is a power of 2!

At any rate, rand() is now considered obsolete -- so random() should
really be used instead. Guess this should be fixed in the next
release and everybody should make this change if they want reasonable
pseudo-random numbers.

-Drew
Received on Sun May 07 1995 - 06:05:24 CEST