On Thu, Jun 4, 2015 at 4:42 AM, Michael Haggerty <mhagger@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 06/04/2015 10:40 AM, Johannes Sixt wrote:
> We *certainly* don't require high-quality random numbers for this
> application. Regarding portability, there is one definite point in favor
> of rand() (it's available on Windows) vs. Junio's recollection that
> random() might have portability advantages, presumably on other platforms.
I agree that anything is OK in this codepath. I just suspected that whichever
one we pick, there would be somebody who says "oh, my system lacks it",
and we will end up adding one of compat/{rand,random}.c to emulate.
And when I anticipated that future, my inclination was to prefer random(),
not rand(), used in the code, not the other way around. Yes, both are in
POSIX, but I was getting the impression that rand() is on its way out
(and rand_r() is already marked as obsolete).
> Maybe the easiest thing would be to switch to using rand() and see if
> the OS/2 and VMS users complain ;-)
We can certainly go that route and I am fine with that as the solution for
today, as long as somebody will remember this discussion when that
complaint comes, and make compat/random.c, and switch the
in-code use to random(), instead of sticking to use of rand() in code.
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