Thread: Question about using rand

I am making a text-football game, and decided to use rand to handle most of the tasks. Such as field goals, rushing yards, etc. Like a 50%chance of making a field goal from 40 yards. But can you only use rand once? I didn't want to try it because it would be a waste of time then. Here is what I am using for the coin toss:

Code:

srand(time(0));
    (rand()%2)+1;

http://faq.cprogramming.com/cgi-bin/...&id=1043284385
It seems people read the FAQ at about rand()%100 == 0 intervals.

There's a FAQ?

Yes, there is a FAQ. I read it but didn't help too much. The part where you scale the numbers using rand, didnt even work. And my book doesn't say much about either.

>> But can you only use rand once?
Use rand as often as you want. Only use srand once (before any calls to rand), but rand itself should be called for each random number you need.

>> I didn't want to try it because it would be a waste of time then.
When in doubt, trying things is often a very good idea.

Originally Posted by Sentral

The part where you scale the numbers using rand, didnt even work.

Somehow I doubt it. Also, there are actually two FAQs on it, not one.


Quzah.

I'd have to agree... I tried the code from this entry:

Code:

#include <iostream>
#include <ctime>

int main(void)
{
        int i;

        srand(time(NULL));
        i = rand();
        std::cout <<"Your random number is " <<i <<std::endl;
        std::cout <<"This compiler can generate random numbers from 0 to "
                  <<RAND_MAX <<std::endl;

        return(0);
}

and got this:

jshao@MCP ~/Programming/C++ $ g++ test.cpp -Wall -W -ansi -o test.exe
jshao@MCP ~/Programming/C++ $ ./test.exe
Your random number is 1232683022
This compiler can generate random numbers from 0 to 2147483647

and if you follow the link on the bottom, it shows you (correctly) how to select a range of numbers.

> The part where you scale the numbers using rand, didnt even work.
At which point the correct response would be.

Hey I tried this from the FAQ and got these results (or non-results, or compiler errors, or ...)

I wonder if the OP did rand()%2 and was saying didn't work on the basis that they got 0101010101010101.... as the sequence?