Difference between revisions of "Ns rand"

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(added caveat for ns_rand 1)
(added link to java's random)
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'''CAVEAT'''
 
'''CAVEAT'''
  
: [ns_rand 1] will always produce the result 0. [ns_rand 2] will produce the desired "coin flip" outcome of 0 or 1.
+
: [ns_rand 1] will always produce the result 0. [ns_rand 2] will produce the desired "coin flip" outcome of 0 or 1. This is standard with [http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/util/Random.html#nextInt(int) Java's Random implementation of nextInt] and most other random number libraries.
  
 
'''SEE ALSO'''
 
'''SEE ALSO'''

Revision as of 23:19, 2 December 2005

Man page: http://aolserver.com/docs/tcl/ns_rand.html


NAME

ns_rand - Generate a random number

SYNOPSIS

ns_rand ?maximum?

DESCRIPTION

This command generates a cryptographically secure random number. If maximum is not specified, the random number returned is a floating-point value n such that 0.0 <= n < 1.0. If maximum is specified, it must be a positive integer between 1 and 2147483647, in which case ns_rand will return an integer value n such that 0 <= n <= max - 1.
Internally ns_rand is implemented with the drand48() and lrand48() standard library functions. An internal random seed is generated the first time ns_rand is called after the server starts.

EXAMPLES

   % ns_rand
   0.39938485692
   % ns_rand 10
   7

CAVEAT

[ns_rand 1] will always produce the result 0. [ns_rand 2] will produce the desired "coin flip" outcome of 0 or 1. This is standard with Java's Random implementation of nextInt and most other random number libraries.

SEE ALSO


Category Documentation - Category Core Tcl API