Random number generation (was Re: Some RFEs that (may) deservediscussion)

[Nick Stoughton <nick@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 2008-03-26 at 11:25 +0000, Geoff Clare wrote:
> > Define awk's rand() function more completely; it is
> > currently the only user-level command that can generate
> > random numbers.
> 
> Obviously this one will depend on the detail of what you want to
> specify.  It should only be okay as long as it doesn't break any
> existing awk implementations. 

While this is not an unreasonable request, and I would like to see awk's
rand() better specified, I believe that a future revision would be
better off specifying one or both of /dev/random and /dev/urandom. I
believe all modern POSIX and POSIX like systems support these devices
anyway ... and while it is a *relatively* recent addition, everyone
implements them basically the same already (OK, at least the urandom
device).
-- 
Nick