Re: Sinister variable caching problem with rand()

Perrin Harkins wrote:
> On Sat, May 15, 2010 at 4:03 PM, Anthony Esposito
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>> In one of my programs I started to receive database errors for not having a
>> unique id. I generate unique ids for each of the mysql lines that I add to
>> the database. I realized that the perl variable $idNum was keeping the same
>> random string for multiple executions.
> 
> You need to call srand() in s a child init handler:
> http://marc.info/?l=apache-modperl&m=123904225030744&w=1
> 
> However, I have to ask, why are you generating id numbers randomly?
> Why not just let mysql  do it with auto_increment?
> 
> - Perrin

I think, in theory you shouldn't have to explicitly srand yourself in 
your startup.pl if you're using mod_perl 1.29 or greater, and perl 5.8.1 
or greater.

see:

http://marc.info/?l=apache-modperl-dev&m=106606815110220&w=2

Adam