>well, 1,3,7,15,31 is (2^n)-1, though the rest of the pattern seems irregular.
>any ideas?
Sounds something like a shift-register (with XOR taps) pseudo-random generator.
They always generate the same sequence, which never contains zero. (Zero would
cause the sequence to get "stuck".) The maximum length of the sequence (given
proper tap selection) is 2^n - 1, where "n" is the length in bits of the shift
register.
The key to using this type of sequence is to have a long sequence (16 or even 32
bits) and to use a function of some variable, like time/date or length of a key-press,
to determine the starting position.
When properly designed, this type of sequence generator always produces a sequence
2^n -1 long, which would probably not corespond to the number of tracks on the disc,
so it could be used to "shuffle" the order in an array that contained a number of
unique
elements corresponding to the number of tracks.
With proper precautions, this type of "shuffle" could generate many unique
non-repeating
sequences, regardless of the number of tracks.
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