Thread: Problem building 64bit rand

THIRD EDIT: Feel free to delete this problem. Turns out the object hadn't been allocated... so when I'd access it's vars they weren't allocated either. Arg.




I've been building a transposition table in C++ so it came up that I needed 64 bit random numbers (don't ask..) so I built this function:

Code:

long long int Ttable::randomLong()
{
  int firstHalf, secondHalf;
  long long int newRand;

  firstHalf = rand();
  secondHalf = rand();

  //copy the first value into the top 32 bits
  newRand = firstHalf;
  newRand = newRand << 32;
  //XOR in the second half covering up all the new zero bits
  newRand = newRand ^ secondHalf;

  return newRand;
}

And all of the variables I assign to it such as:

Code:

white = randomLong();

or for testing

Code:

cerr << randomLong();

give me segfaults when I go to use em. I know I'm probably missing something simple. If you can't find anything and know of a good *default* 64 bit random number generator that'd also.. probably be fine.

While I wait I'll go recheck the code with a standard random function... but that should work fine.

I haven't gotten any useful info from GDB or valgrind other than helping me find that these vars are the ones segfaulting.

Thanks
-E



EDIT:
I changed to rand() and it still hasn't worked. I must be doing something incorrect at declaration?

Code:

long long int white;

I'm going to back up the files and try out the "standard" 64 bit int, should be int64_t. I hadn't thought that that could be a problem :S. Will report back if change is successful.

SECOND EDIT:
Didn't change anything. I still don't see what it's doing that would cause an allocation problem. These aren't pointers :S.

This speaks volumes for using an approach that makes sure that an object is fully constructed precisely after the constructor is finished. Otherwise you are going to have to add extra checks to make sure the object isn't in a zombie state in all functions or risk doing what you just did.