On Fri, Aug 17, 2001 at 09:30:24AM -0700, Justin Erenkrantz wrote: > [ CCing [EMAIL PROTECTED] - this came about due to flood requiring a PRNG... ] > > On Fri, Aug 17, 2001 at 09:21:06AM -0700, Aaron Bannert wrote: > > Really this should be in APR, but I fear that PRNG is a touchy subject > > for portability. The problem is that when you're using a PRNG, you usually > > need to know the operating parameters of the PRNG, like what you ran in to: > > period, distribution, etc... If we put an abstraction into APR, we may end > > up with lowest-common-denominator-syndrome, where it becomes less than > > useful for cases that require specific amounts of entropy. > > What do you think? > > Knuth Vol. 2 or Numerical Recipies in C. =-) Both have fairly large > and detailed sections on PRNGs. (I have both books.) > > I don't see a problem adding a PRNG into APR as long as we have a by > default "good" one available with known characteristics. -- justin
Um... APR *already* has random stuff in there. It can build against the truerand library, and it can use the /dev/random device. If we have a small hunk of PRNG code, that would be great. Unfortunately, though, it would be rather difficult to feed APR with a lot of entropic data. (i.e. where/how would it come from?) But just a good PRNG function would be handy, I'd think. Cheers, -g -- Greg Stein, http://www.lyra.org/
