David Green writes: > On 7/12/04, Austin Hastings wrote: > >--- Larry Wall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > >> The hard part being to pick a random number in [0,Inf) uniformly. :-) > > > >Half of all numbers in [0, Inf) are in the range [Inf/2, Inf). Which > >collapses to the range [Inf, Inf). Returning Inf seems to satisfy the > >uniform distribution requirement: if you have a number you're waiting > >to see returned, just wait a bit longer... > > I like the 1/n trick used in the Perl Cookbook (Picking a Random Line from > a File). We could apply the same idea here: > > rand($_)<1 && ($chosen=$_) for 1...Inf;
I just have to say, I am forever indebted to that algorithm. Luke
