Re: Still wondering about random numbers...

From: "Joe Conway" <joseph(dot)conway(at)home(dot)com>
To: <lockhart(at)fourpalms(dot)org>, "Tom Lane" <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>
Cc: "Dr(dot) Evil" <drevil(at)sidereal(dot)kz>, <pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org>
Subject: Re: Still wondering about random numbers...
Date: 2001-08-07 16:53:15
Message-ID: 019c01c11f61$74382590$48d210ac@jecw2k1
Views: Raw Message | Whole Thread | Download mbox | Resend email
Thread:
Lists: pgsql-general pgsql-patches

> > > Looks like plain old C library random numbers. If you want to use
> > > /dev/random or /dev/urandom, best bet would be to write your own C
function.
> > > You should also check through the contrib stuff -- I don't recall
seeing RNG
> > > functions in there,
> > I don't see any in there either, but this seems like a fine candidate
for
> > a contrib item. I doubt we'd accept it into the mainstream for lack of
> > portability, but as a contrib item, why not?
>
> configure is our friend. A better random number generator is always
> welcome imho, and if it can be reliably supported through autoconf then
> it would stand a chance to be included in the main tree. Especially
> since the usage of random() seems to be very isolated in the code.
> contrib/ is always a good first step though...
>
> - Thomas

Sounds like there's some interest in this. I just wrote a function for
generating random initialization vectors from /dev/urandom within the past
week -- should be easy to make a pgsql contrib out of it. I'll send
something to patches in a couple of days or so.

-- Joe

In response to

Browse pgsql-general by date

  From Date Subject
Next Message Eric, Audet 2001-08-07 17:19:20 Admin tool
Previous Message gateley 2001-08-07 16:41:36 Re: Still wondering about random numbers...

Browse pgsql-patches by date

  From Date Subject
Next Message Bruce Momjian 2001-08-07 16:54:33 Re: contrib/postgis spatial extensions
Previous Message Bruce Momjian 2001-08-07 16:48:14 Re: Re: Fuzzy matching