Advice on Library Interface

Keith Wansbrough Keith.Wansbrough@cl.cam.ac.uk
Thu, 08 May 2003 11:10:00 +0100


> 1.  Should the functions generate the necessary uniforms, or accept a
> list of uniforms?  In other words, shuld the signature be
> 
> 	wgn :: Int      -- ^ seed to generate the uniforms
>             -> [Double] -- ^ list of Gaussian random variables

I don't like this approach (better to pass in a list of uniforms, or a 
generator), but if you take it, Int isn't good enough.  I might want to 
provide more than 31 bits of entropy to start off the generator!  The 
Linux random(3) function uses 1984 bits of entropy, for example.

--KW 8-)