<div dir="ltr">On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 17:07, James Cook <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:mokus@deepbondi.net">mokus@deepbondi.net</a>></span> wrote:<br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div class="im">On Aug 16, 2011, at 4:04 PM, Evan Laforge wrote:<br>
> I've noticed there's a convention to put modules having to deal with<br>
> randomness into System.Random. I thought System was for OS<br>
> interaction? Granted getting a random seed usually means going to the<br>
> OS, but isn't the rest of it, like generating random sequences,<br>
> distributions, selecting based on probability, shuffling, etc. all<br>
> non-OS related algorithms?<br><br>
</div>System definitely does seem like an odd choice. In most cases the only interaction any PRNG, even when accessed via the FFI, has with the "system" is - as you say - to get an initial seed value for a global instance.<br>
</blockquote><div><br></div><div>I'd be tempted to guess that the whole reason it's under System is the IO component.</div></div><div><br></div>-- <br>brandon s allbery <a href="mailto:allbery.b@gmail.com" target="_blank">allbery.b@gmail.com</a><br>
wandering unix systems administrator (available) (412) 475-9364 vm/sms<br><br>
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