My Perl is "perl v5.8.8 built for i486-linux-gnu-thread-multi". The application I am writing does not pertain to security or cryptography, it is for a scientific application. I'd rather keep it as portable as possible.

I'm not overly worried about the quality of the stock Perl rand() or about exhausting the numbers of random numbers it can produce. I don't think I would need more than 100,000 numbers.

I originally only wanted access to the seed, but not being able to do so using stock Perl has led me to deal with things I am not very familiar with like how to generate a seed, etc...

What method would you recommend me to do? I'm unclear about some of the differences.

  • Just use the stock srand() with a home-made seed like you explained earlier
  • Or maybe using the Math::Random module. It seems nice because it has the option to create and report a seed. But is it a higher quality random number generator. Is it slower than the stock one?
  • Or maybe Math::Random::RT? It seems to be higher quality but is a bit slower. But would have to be seeded manually?

    Thanks for the help GrandFather!

    In reply to Re^4: Getting srand's seed by fangly
    in thread Getting srand's seed by fangly

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