On 08/06/2011 08:47 AM, Anna Sidera wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I am using gcc on a unix machine. Can you tell me how many random numbers can be generated using
>
> rand()
>
> before the random numbers start repeating? I found that RAND_MAX is equal to 2147483647.
One would hope it has full period, i.e. it generates all RAND_MAX numbers,
but that depends on your system.
It's perhaps not a good idea to depend on the system's generator. A decent
32-bit one is
unsigned int xor-generator()
{
static unsigned int y=2463534242;
y^=(y<<13); y^=(y>>17); return (y^=(y<<5));
}
Andrew.
http://www.jstatsoft.org/v08/i14/paper
