Aaron Sherman wrote:
On Thu, 2005-03-17 at 18:06 -0600, Rod Adams wrote:I would suggest wandering over to P6i and offering to write a Parrot version of M::TR, and see if they agree to put it in a distro of theirs. I have no idea what their policy is on getting packages into their version of "core". But if it's there, then adding it to Perl should be trivial, regardless of what Perl has in "core".
This is a SEPARATE need from the need for a repeatable, standard PRNG, and should always operate off of the best source of entropy available to the program. Right now, that's /dev/urandom (for non-blocking hybridized entropy pool + PRNG) under most Unix variants and something like Math::TrulyRandom's setjmp/longjmp hack elsewhere. Speaking of which, there's a good reason to keep those two when you get to them ;-)
One solution would be to adapt M::TR to Perl 6, and just pull it into
the core. I'm just saying that it's a wide-spread need among a vast
array of different applications (crypto, games, statistics, etc), and it
makes sense to "corize" it.
It's also not a Perlism, so all the other Parrot languages would likely enjoy it as well.
One thing I see looking at M:TR on CPAN is that it appears to only work on *nix machines. Making it cross platform would be a Good Thing.
As for setjmp/longjmp:
D:\Home\Perl>perldoc -f setjmp No documentation for perl function `setjmp' found
D:\Home\Perl>perldoc -f longjmp No documentation for perl function `longjmp' found
Sounds like they are using XS. (another reason to do it in Parrot).
-- Rod Adams
