[Python-ideas] Python's Source of Randomness and the random.py module Redux
Greg Ewing
greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz
Fri Sep 11 08:19:13 CEST 2015
Chris Angelico wrote:
> I'm
> not sure what the difference is between "seeding a PRNG with entropy"
> and "seeding a deterministic PRNG with a particular seed value",
> though; aside from the fact that one of them uses a known value and
> the other doesn't, of course. Back in my BASIC programming days, we
> used to use "RANDOMIZE TIMER" to seed the RNG with time-of-day, or
> "RANDOMIZE 12345" (or other value) to seed with a particular value;
I think the only other difference is that the Linux kernel
is continually re-seeding its generator whenever more
unpredictable bits become available. It's not something
you need to explicitly do yourself, as in your BASIC
example.
--
Greg
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