Re^2: random number with range

An interesting way to do it. But expensive in memory and time for large ranges. Consider:

my @range = ( -1_000_000 .. 1_000_000 );
my $random_number = $range[rand(@range)];
[download]

which takes about 1/2 a second and has about a 100 MB dynamic memory requirement.

DWIM is Perl's answer to Gödel

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Re^3: random number with range by ikegami (Patriarch) on Jun 01, 2006 at 18:06 UTC
Indeed, but the technique is particularly useful for sets. For example, `my @set = ( 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 ); my $random = $set[rand(@set)];` [download] `my @set = qw( apple orange banana cucumber ); my $random = $set[rand(@set)];` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^3: random number with range by Enlil (Parson) on Jun 01, 2006 at 18:17 UTC
won't disagree, but first thing that came to mind for similar situations where the technique is useful, like the ubiquitous password generator: `my @chars = ( 'A' .. 'Z', 0 .. 9); my $pw = join('',@chars[ map { rand @chars } ( 1 .. 12 ) ]);` [download]	[reply] [d/l]