Thanks for the feedback. The transcript of my reasoning in my previous email was too brief, sorry about that. After reading the man-page, I was surprised that grepping the ksh source for arc4random yielded nothing. But after reading the rand man-page its behavior and relation to arc4random became clear, which is also documented in the commit messages of the revisions mentioned in my previous email. I therefore thought the explicit reference to arc4random was redundant by now when it's used indirectly via rand, whose man-page describes this behavior. Anyway, thanks for applying the useful parts of the patch!
On Sun, Feb 19, 2017 at 06:33:59PM +0100, Ingo Schwarze wrote: > Hi Anton, > > Anton Lindqvist wrote on Sun, Feb 19, 2017 at 08:29:31AM +0100: > > > Usage of rand was replaced with arc4random (var.c, r1.17) and later > > documented (ksh.1, r1.70). The change was later on reverted (var.c, > > r1.39) back to using rand and srand_deterministic. The patch below > > removes the explicit mention of arc4random and documents the current > > behavior. > > I think both the current text and your patch are wrong. > > The current text says that srand(3) is used. > That, indeed, is not true, so thanks for the heads-up. > > Your patch deletes a sentence that is actually true: > "By default, arc4random(3) is used to produce values." > That is true because rand(3) uses arc4random(3) by default. > I think we should keep that information. It tells people that > on OpenBSD, ksh(1) RANDOM is of decent quality by default. > > So, here is my suggestion. I don't think we need to say that ksh(1) > calls arc4random(3) indirectly via rand(3). From the perspective > of ksh(1) users, that's an implementation detail. > > OK? > Ingo > > > Index: ksh.1 > =================================================================== > RCS file: /cvs/src/bin/ksh/ksh.1,v > retrieving revision 1.186 > diff -u -r1.186 ksh.1 > --- ksh.1 14 Nov 2016 06:59:42 -0000 1.186 > +++ ksh.1 19 Feb 2017 17:20:31 -0000 > @@ -1704,12 +1704,10 @@ > If the variable > .Ev RANDOM > is assigned a value, the value is used as the seed to > -.Xr srand 3 > +.Xr srand_deterministic 3 > and subsequent references of > .Ev RANDOM > -will use > -.Xr rand 3 > -to produce values, resulting in a predictable sequence. > +produce a predictable sequence. > .It Ev REPLY > Default parameter for the > .Ic read
