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Date: Wed, 12 May 2021 17:43:42 +0200
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Discussion: Object-scoped RNG
From: cschneid@cschneid.com (Christian Schneider)

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Am 11.05.2021 um 23:20 schrieb Larry Garfield <larry@garfieldtech.com>:
> 3) Perhaps it should be named RandomSequence or similar?  It's not =
truly generating random numbers.  It's generating a repeatable but =
difficult to produce sequence off of a seed value.  That's not the same =
thing as random_int() et al.
>=20
> So, at first pass, an API could be as simple as (pseudocode):
>=20
> class RandomSequence {
>  public function __construct(int $seed =3D time(), $algorithm =3D =
'some_default') { ... }
>=20
>  public function next(): int { ... }
> }
>=20
> And that's it.  That's nice and simple and predictable to use.


Would the generated values fill the whole int range, i.e. 64 bit on =
modern systems?

And would it make sense to add max and min for the generated values like =
we have with random_int()?
Because mapping arbitrary int values to a specific range is error-prone: =
Just using modulo leads to bias in the resulting values.

- Chris


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