Re: Pike 8.0 beta

>Peter Bortas wrote:
>>o The random(), random_string() and random_seed() might be more random
>
>>  On computers with a hardware pseudo random generator random() can
>>  return significantly more random numbers, however, this means that
>>  random_seed is a no-op on those machines.
>
>That would mean that it becomes impossible to generate an identical
>random stream using the same random_seed between different runs or
>between different architectures.
>
>I'd say it would be prudent to switch to a predictable
>pseudo-random-sequence as soon as someone has called random_seed() with
>a non-zero parameter.  If random_seed() is not being called, then
>it does not matter, and faster and more random is better.
>

With the cryptographic work that has happened over the past year or
two I think the road ahead should be to just use /dev/random for
random()/random_string() for a slow but secure random source, and
deprecate random_see(). If you have any additional requirements like
predictable or fast you need to explicitly pick that. I have made a
few drafts of this already, but there needs to be an interface class
implemented in C to access the _random lfun.