On Tue, 2004-03-30 at 20:48, Phil Schaechter wrote: [...] > If I use keys to select 100 items to process, then come back at a later date > and pick another 100, and so on, will I eventually hit "most" of the items? > > My own experiments show this to be more or less true - but I'd like to know if > anyone can explain to me how random is random.
I don't know much about "Perl's random" but random in a statistical or mathematical context means that "over a large enough period of time" ALL possible "answers" will occur. But it also means that the same answer could return 70 times before any other is returned. However I suppose that theoretically if you keep altering the database, the calculation of the random number changes as well which IMHO might cause some records te be 'skipped'. But that's more speculation than knowledge... HTH (a bit) Bram -- # Mertens Bram "M8ram" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Linux User #349737 # # SuSE Linux 8.2 (i586) kernel 2.4.20-4GB i686 256MB RAM # # 11:30am up 9 days 15:07, 11 users, load average: 0.08, 0.02, 0.01 # -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <http://learn.perl.org/> <http://learn.perl.org/first-response>
