Hello, On Tue, 29 Aug 2006, Andrew Donnellan wrote: > On 8/25/06, Hubert Chan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >Err, I don't think that __GNUC__ actually guarantees the presence of > >/dev/random. So this patch does not seem to be correct. > > > >(Although /dev/random, if you have it, is probably a better source of > >randomness than rdtsc, or gethrtime.) > > So what would be the alternative? Would we have to use a makefile hack > (e.g. test for the existence of /dev/random and set a compile flag) or > something to figure out what random seed we should use?
Unless you need cryptographically secure random-ness (which is unlikely since this is a test suite) any pseudo-random generator should be adequate as a source of randomness. So you could use (for example) some post-header portion of a gzipped file. Of course, this gives you "deterministic random-ness" which sounds like an oxymoron---but isn't according to recent results in Complexity! Regards, Kapil. -- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
