19 Feb
2003
19 Feb
'03
9:09 p.m.
In article by Peter Jeremy:
Does anyone here know why the BSD random(3) is defined
to return a
positive int (31 bits) rather than a full 32 bits of pseudo-entropy?
(This came up is a discussion comparing random(3) with arc4random(3)
in another list).
Peter
<wild guess>
Maybe it's a C-ism. With a 31-bit shift register, the overflow is going
to stay in a 32-bit variable where it can be dealt with in C. If they
had used a 32-bit shift register, then grabbing the overflow becomes
more difficult.
</wild guess>
Warren