Re: Still wondering about random numbers... - Mailing list pgsql-general

From Joe Conway
Subject Re: Still wondering about random numbers...
Date
Msg-id 019c01c11f61$74382590$48d210ac@jecw2k1
Whole thread Raw
In response to Still wondering about random numbers...  ("Dr. Evil" <drevil@sidereal.kz>)
List pgsql-general
> > > Looks like plain old C library random numbers. If you want to use
> > > /dev/random or /dev/urandom, best bet would be to write your own C
function.
> > > You should also check through the contrib stuff -- I don't recall
seeing RNG
> > > functions in there,
> > I don't see any in there either, but this seems like a fine candidate
for
> > a contrib item.  I doubt we'd accept it into the mainstream for lack of
> > portability, but as a contrib item, why not?
>
> configure is our friend. A better random number generator is always
> welcome imho, and if it can be reliably supported through autoconf then
> it would stand a chance to be included in the main tree. Especially
> since the usage of random() seems to be very isolated in the code.
> contrib/ is always a good first step though...
>
>                     - Thomas

Sounds like there's some interest in this. I just wrote a function for
generating random initialization vectors from /dev/urandom within the past
week -- should be easy to make a pgsql contrib out of it. I'll send
something to patches in a couple of days or so.

-- Joe



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