Hi fellow Perl users! The rand() function as implemented in RISC OS Perl 1.13 for the RiscPC is *not* uniform as it should be.
Some time ago, when I was experimenting with this, I wrote the attached program to demonstrate the problem but it's just dawned on me that I never even mentioned this problem to the mailing list. So here I am doing just that. The attached program should not be run in a task window because it needs to be able to change mode and plot a probability distribution graph. If you run it you will notice that values in the middle of rand's range are far less likely to occur than values at either end. Another thing I've noticed is that the rate of change in the probability appears to be linear in the lower half of the range and non-linear in the upper half. Weird eh? Does anyone (Nick?) know why rand has this behaviour or, even better, know how to fix it? PS. I tried writing my own random number generator in Perl but, although it works and is uniform, it is unfortunately really quite slow. If anyone's interested, I can post it. -- James Taylor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Based in Southam, Cheltenham, UK. PGP key available ID: 3FBE1BF9 Fingerprint: F19D803624ED6FE8 370045159F66FD02
DispRand,102
Description: application/riscos
