Bill Baxter wrote:
I guess I'd find it more useful to have a function that gave a random
value of a given type, like random_value!(short). That way you get
the signed/unsigned specification automatically. But both could be
useful.
You can, just pass short values into uniform() or specify type arguments
for it. Actually uniform() used to ask compulsively for its parameter
type, but I changed that because it was too verbose for no good reason.
* If you're creating a number in the range 0..uint.max+1, you're going to
have to be careful in lots of places. You can't get that number from an
array length, for example.
* I think that hard-core scientific/mathematical users are the main users of
the more esoteric cases, and can be expected to get it right (and have no
problem with the "[]","()","(]"... notation. I think that what's important
for the default is that be correct and obvious for as many cases as
possible.
The strength of "[)" is that if we can say "ALL ranges in D are [) unless
otherwise stated by the user", it's hard to ever justify breaking that
convention.
That sounds reasonable to me. As long as there's an easy way to also
create a random number that covers an entire range of a given type
(perhaps limited to integral types).
It's a good litmus test. With the API suggested by Don, in order to
generate a random byte you'd have to say:
auto b = uniform!("[]")(rng, byte.min, byte.max);
Is this acceptable?
Andrei
