ftp.cs.arizona.edu/ftp.cs.arizona.edu.tar/ftp.cs.arizona.edu/icon/newsgrp/group93c.txt/000069_icon-group-sender _Fri Oct 8 05:07:26 1993.msg

Internet Message Format | 1994-02-02 | 2KB

Received: by cheltenham.cs.arizona.edu; Fri, 8 Oct 1993 08:17:59 MST
Via: uk.ac.edinburgh.festival; Fri, 8 Oct 1993 13:07:02 +0100
Date: 08 Oct 93 13:06:52 BST
From: R J Hare <[e-mail]>
Subject: Various questions
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Organisation: Edinburgh University Computing Service
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I have three questions:

1) What is the 'best' (ie: most random) way to seed the random number
   generator in a particular situation. Currently, I do something like:

   &random:=&date[6:8]||&date[9:11]||&clock[1:3]||&clock[4:6]||&clock[7:9]

   which produces a 10 digit number as a seed. Would I be 'better' using just
   the six digits obtained from &clock?

2) The above syntax is tedious. Is there a better way (I am sure there is)? In
   particular, can I say:

   &random:=&date[6:8||9:11]||&clock[1:3||4:6||7:9]

   where the ||s represent some way of concatenating substrings of a value
   whilst referring to that value only once.

3) If I have a list which is (say) 10 elements long, what happens if I assign
   a value to list[12]? Is an empty (null) list[11] created? I have tried
   this, and the assignment appears to fail and the list length is unchanged,
   so what is happening 'behind the scenes'?

I wouldn't ask these daft questions but I and my Icon book are several miles
away from each other and are unlikely to rejoin eachother for several days.

Thanks.

Roger Hare.