Thread: Nick help

<<split from some other thread>>
Hey guys I attempted this program for fun and was wondering what I need to change for this to work properly? Currently it will display one random number at a time a whole bunch of times then when it hits zero it will always say count is 25.

Code:

#include <iostream>
#include <ctime>
using namespace std;
int main ()

{
    
    
    int random, count, i;
    
    
    for (i = 1; ; ++i){
        srand(time(NULL));
        random = rand() % 10;
        cout << random << endl;
        
        
        if(random == 0){
        break;
        }
        }
        
        while (i == random){
              count++;
              }
              
              cout << count;
        
        system ("pause");
        
        return 0;
        }

Do not call srand() more than once in one program, there is no point, especially in a fast loop where time() will be the same everytime (the measure is in seconds).

I notice that the way my RNG works, having that srand() inside the for loop causes it to output the same number repeatedly. Moving it to where it should be:

Code:

        srand(time(NULL));
    
    for (i = 1; ; ++i){
        random = rand() % 10;

Made a drastic difference.

This illustrates why you should not seed more than once. Every srand() call resets the generator, so if you call it like this:

Code:

	for (i=0;i<10;i++) {
		srand(22222);
		printf("%d\n", rand());
	}

You will get the exact same number 10 times. Now remember that time() will be the same for an entire second in your code.