Looking for some random-functions ... and maybe a bug report_(re)

Tue, 23 Sep 97 19:28:57 -0400

On Tue, 23 Sep 1997 22:52:30 +0200 (MEST), Peter Gerwinski wrote:

>According to Kevin A. Foss:
>> 
>> If all you need is system time, why do you go through all of the
>> DPMI/int calls/&c, instead of just using extended Pascal's timestamp
>> routines.
>
>These only have a resolution of one second which probably is
>not "random" enough for this purpose.  The 1/100s when a program
>was started is almost a true random number; if we use the second
>in the minute it might be too regular.

Well then, let's add a 100ths count to timestamp... :)  

Seriously, is anyone doing any work on adding the proposed extensions
to timestamp mentioned in the docs?   An implemented us_Timer field
would be random enough, I'd think.  Of course, I already see this
becoming a chicken-and-the-egg problem, because I don't know of a
portable way to get system time readings of less than a second.   But I
would guess that all platforms offer the information in some form or
another, and we could populate rts-time.c with a bunch of #ifdefs.

-Kevin
--
Kevin A. Foss   ---   kfoss@mint.net
--

Kevin A. Foss (kfoss@mint.net)