Re: What is the limit of random number that can be selected

Yeah, it can:

perl -e 'foreach (1..20) {print rand(2**40)."\n";}'
652134293073.004
1052236192611.47
192842278698.137
607110319202.945
169022882701.082
527530860527.984
927864292758.34
1056669509421.09
334346614774.41
928276890176.75
1007499895313.79
947274310133.477
99715725600.9883
844160053849.766
826658965072.496
492702127712.117
518596741600.816
70972611711.0312
56473002822.4492
357827335249.008
[download]

Use the int function to get integers.

Comment on Re: What is the limit of random number that can be selected Download Code

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Re: Re: What is the limit of random number that can be selected by TimToady (Parson) on Apr 23, 2004 at 21:09 UTC
You have at least a 48-bit random number generator, so count yourself lucky. Even so, if you change your 40 to a 49, you might find that all twenty of your values are even numbers, as it is on my machine. So taking the number modulo a few billion leaves you with potential skewings of about one part in 65,000 or so. That's good enough for many, but not all, applications.	[reply]