[Haskell-cafe] What's the best seed for random API ?

[Alex Rozenshteyn]

Admittedly, I don't know much about this from the haskell end or about the
particular api.

If you want statistical randomness, your seed doesn't matter; just the PRNG.
 I might even have seeded with a constant or taken the seed from the user.

Seeding from urandom will make your output "more random" for some
unquantifiable meaning of the phrase.

If you want cryptographic randomness, you probably shouldn't be writing your
own library if you can avoid it.

On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 7:21 PM, z_axis <z_axis at 163.com> wrote:

>
> picoSec :: IO Integer
> picoSec = do
>    t <- ctPicosec `liftM` (getClockTime >>= toCalendarTime)
>    return t
>
> rollDice ::  Int -> IO Int
> rollDice n = do
>    ps <- picoSec
>    return $ (take 1 $ randomRs (1,n) $ mkStdGen $ fromInteger ps) !! 0
>
> The above code uses `ctPicosec` as seed. Is it better to use the output of
> /dev/urandom as seed ?
>
> Sincerely!
>
> -----
> e^(π.i) + 1 = 0
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-- 
          Alex R
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