On 10/10/2022 8:14 PM, Bart Schaefer wrote:
On Mon, Oct 10, 2022 at 4:38 PM Clinton Bunch <cdb_zsh@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Is there a reason that zsh goes out of the way (srand_deterministic) to
use the least random "random" function on modern Unix?
The values of RANDOM form an intentionally-repeatable
pseudo-random
sequence; subshells that reference RANDOM will result in identical
pseudo-random values unless the value of RANDOM is referenced or
seeded in the parent shell in between subshell invocations.
This is e.g. so you aren't surprised by referencing $RANDOM inside
$(...) and getting a different result.
Well, I guess that explains why it uses rand, but doesn't really
explain to me why you'd *want* this behavior. I would expect to get a
different value in a subshell than I got in the parent shell. I'm
supposedly looking for random numbers.
I guess I side with OpenBSD who changed the default behavior of rand().