rand() function performs poorly

[William M. Grim]

William M. Grim wrote:
Matthew Dillon wrote:

:When you run that code, it will print "OoOoOoOo..." without any 
change; :it's very predictable.
:
:I'm certainly up for bringing the later 4.x rand() code down into 
:DragonFly.  Where do you think they keep it?
:
:And don't one of you other peeps go and do it for me. :-D  I want to 
try :this one on my own!  >:-)
:
:Thanks,
:Mike

    I think you are talking about /usr/src/lib/libc/stdlib/rand.c, but
    I don't think FreeBSD-4 or FreeBSD-5 has fixed that.  They committed
    something but it looks like they backed it out.
    Most people use the random()/srandom() facility rather then the old
    rand() facility, or use /dev/urandom.  The old rand() facility     
is severely limited due to API requirements and constraints.

                    -Matt
                    Matthew Dillon                     
<dillon at xxxxxxxxxxxxx>


You could be right.  I am attempting to update my dfly before I go 
searching for the fixes FreeBSD has.  However, I am assuming it was 
"fixed" in some way, because on FreeBSD 5.2.1, the output comes out more 
random, such as "OOooooOOoOOOOOOoo..." or something.

Not to reply to myself, but the version of rand.c in dragonfly is quite 
old.. 1.2.2.1.  FreeBSD's rand.c is up to 1.15.

I'll just go ahead and try patching my system and testing it out.  If it 
works okay, I'll submit it to the patch list and someone can take it 
from there if everyone feels it's okay to do so.  It's not like I have 
to do much work to do this, as the work has already been done in FBSD.

--Mike