I keep reading this, but never an explanation. Being curious, I took a look at Visual Studio's code for rand and srand and all srand does is set a global variable. rand performs a typical pseudo-random number algorithm based on the global variable.
While I don't see any need to call srand multiple times, save for using the same seed to repeat the random values, I cannot see the harm. Why is it "bad"?
What argument are you going to call it with next time? And why? If you want to make your rand sequence more random, throw away random numbers by calling rand() while waiting for something to happen you have no control over (such as a keypress).
"Most people think, great God will come from the sky, take away everything, and make everybody feel high" - Bob Marley
<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="MarkS" data-cid="5014813"><p>I keep reading this, but never an explanation. Being curious, I took a look at Visual Studio's code for rand and srand and all srand does is set a global variable. rand performs a typical pseudo-random number algorithm based on the global variable.<br /> <br />While I don't see any need to call srand multiple times, save for using the same seed to repeat the random values, I cannot see the harm. Why is it "bad"?</p></blockquote><br />because you normally pass a fairly low resolution timer value to srand, so if you do srand , rand, srand rand and both srand calls get passed the same value you will also get the same result from the rand calls. (which makes it very non random)
[size="1"]I don't suffer from insanity, I'm enjoying every minute of it.
The voices in my head may not be real, but they have some good ideas!
It's not necessarily calling srand multiple times, it's beginners repeatedly calling srand with time(0) and making a "rand isn't random" thread on gamedev:
for ( int i = 1; i <= 10; i=i+1 )
{
srand( time(0) );
int val = rand()%10 + 1;
cout << val << endl;
}
Well, you can't call it with the return value from rand(), since it will be the same. And if you already seeded it with a timer, seeding it again soon afterwards is likely to be predictable too. Only call srand with a known value if you need to repeat a random sequence again.
EDIT: Which is incredibly useful e.g. for rerunning simulations or doing a replay playback when you only store keypresses.
"Most people think, great God will come from the sky, take away everything, and make everybody feel high" - Bob Marley
The explanation is that that's not how you should use a pseudo-random number generator. The people that designed the PRNG expect you to seed it once and then extract many numbers from it. If you use it differently, you may get bad results, depending on the exact details of how you use it.
I don't know the context in which you heard that re-using srand is bad, but if you understand that you don't have to re-seed all the time (usually never) then I think you probably understand what's going on and can do what you like.
void hurrrrrrrr() {__asm sub [ebp+4],5;}
There are ten kinds of people in this world: those who understand binary and those who don't.
I keep reading this, but never an explanation. Being curious, I took a look at Visual Studio's code for rand and srand and all srand does is set a global variable. rand performs a typical pseudo-random number algorithm based on the global variable.
because you just don't need to do that, its like checking variable twice just to make sure its value is consistent. just do
// time() returns the time as the number of seconds since the Epoch, 1970-01-01 00:00:00 +0000 (UTC).
srand(time()); // well not sure time() is present in MSVC
