Thread: Pseudorandom generator

I got a very strange problem with rand(). Let's say I want a different sequence of random number for each run, I write;

Code:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <time.h>

int main()
{
    srand((unsigned)time(NULL));

    int a, b;

    a = rand();
    b = rand();

    printf("a = %d\nb = %d", a, b);

    return 0;
}

For "b", everything works fine, it is truly random (or anyway: as random as this function can get). "a" behave very differently, in fact I tried this many time, and the first pseudoradom number I gererate is not random at all. In this example, I got a = 23619 the first time, then 23624, 23659, ... The more I wait, the higher it gets, as if the first random number generated was not random at all, but followed seconds.

The best solution I found is;

Code:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <time.h>

int main()
{
    srand((unsigned)time(NULL));
    rand();

    int a, b;

    a = rand();
    b = rand();

    printf("a = %d\nb = %d", a, b);

    return 0;
}

To get rid of the first "random" number. Is there a better method ?

Code:

srand((unsigned)time(NULL));

The more I wait, the higher it gets, as if the first random number generated was not random at all, but followed seconds.

This is not coincidental. You can look up Mersenne Twister if you want something "better" than plain srand(time), or maybe hash the result of time. Go to www.eternallyconfuzzled.com for more information.