A friend has suggested that you might want to consider
allowing ${name=rand(41)} as a construct similar to :41?
Guy
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jacek Prucia [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Wednesday, May 12, 2004 9:37 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: fixed range for random variables
>
>
>
> Really nifty flood feature is the ability to initialize variable to
> random value. Using following construct: ${=name} inside
> requesttemplate causes flood to create variable 'name', and assign it
> a value obtained by calling rand/lrand48/random. Consider a typical
> scenario, where you would like to fetch some item (say article) from
> database using random index. Here's an example:
>
> responsetemplate="http://www.example.com/getArticle?id={=art_id}
>
> The problem is that range for random values is 0 - RAND_MAX
> (which is 2147483647 on my system). Not every database out
> there can be
> proud to have (calls random...) 27667 articles handy. So we need fixed
> range for random variables, which is what I have already written. The
> problem is how we integrate this into flood.
>
> Right now the range can be specified as:
>
> 5:24
> -12:79
> :41 (means 0:41)
> 123: (means 123:RAND_MAX)
>
> Natural choice would be to use following construct for assigning fixed
> range:
>
> ${5:24=name}
>
> This just extends existing concept, but also look's kinda odd. I would
> like to replace it with more general syntax:
>
> ${name=rand(5:24)}
>
> Is it okay with everybody? Please speak up if that violates anything.
>
> regards
> --
> Jacek Prucia
>
