Hi Doug, > I must be missing something in the discussion about random > numbers. Why does groff need them? In the offered example > tmp="$d/eqn2graph$groff_rand" > the "random number" serves only to make a (supposedly) unique > name. But of course, if the number is truly random, it is not > guaranteed to be unique. Why does groff not use the time-honored > $$ to serve the purpose? The only requirement for an absolute > guarantee of uniqueness is that the shell script whose pid $$ > represents lives as long as the temporary file.
http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/groff.git/tree/contrib/eqn2graph/eqn2graph.sh#n59 is the usage. Dropping $RANDOM would seem reasonable. :-) Cheers, Ralph.
