iOS Manual Pages

This document is a Mac OS X manual page. Manual pages are a command-line technology for providing documentation. You can view these manual pages locally using the man(1) command. These manual pages come from many different sources, and thus, have a variety of writing styles.

For more information about the manual page format, see the manual page for manpages(5).

RAND48(3)                BSD Library Functions Manual                RAND48(3)

NAME
     drand48, erand48, jrand48, lcong48, lrand48, mrand48, nrand48, seed48,
     srand48 -- pseudo random number generators and initialization routines

LIBRARY
     Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS
     #include <stdlib.h>

     double
     drand48(void);

     double
     erand48(unsigned short xsubi[3]);

     long
     jrand48(unsigned short xsubi[3]);

     void
     lcong48(unsigned short param[7]);

     long
     lrand48(void);

     long
     mrand48(void);

     long
     nrand48(unsigned short xsubi[3]);

     unsigned short *
     seed48(unsigned short seed16v[3]);

     void
     srand48(long seedval);

DESCRIPTION
     The rand48() family of functions generates pseudo-random numbers, using a
     linear congruential algorithm working on integers 48 bits in size.  The
     particular formula employed is r(n+1) = (a * r(n) + c) mod m.  The
     default value for the multiplicand `a' is 0xfdeece66d (25214903917).  The
     default value for the the addend `c' is 0xb (11).  The modulo is always
     fixed at m = 2 ** 48.  r(n) is called the seed of the random number gen-erator. generator.
     erator.

     For the six generator routines described next, the first computational
     step is to perform a single iteration of the algorithm.

     The drand48() and erand48() functions return values of type double.  The
     full 48 bits of r(n+1) are loaded into the mantissa of the returned
     value, with the exponent set such that the values produced lie in the
     interval [0.0, 1.0).

     The lrand48() and nrand48() functions return values of type long in the
     range [0, 2**31-1].  The high-order (31) bits of r(n+1) are loaded into
     the lower bits of the returned value, with the topmost (sign) bit set to
     zero.

     The mrand48() and jrand48() functions return values of type long in the
     range [-2**31, 2**31-1].  The high-order (32) bits of r(n+1) are loaded
     into the returned value.

     The drand48(), lrand48(), and mrand48() functions use an internal buffer
     to store r(n).  For these functions the initial value of r(0) =
     0x1234abcd330e = 20017429951246.

     On the other hand, erand48(), nrand48(), and jrand48() use a user-sup-plied user-supplied
     plied buffer to store the seed r(n), which consists of an array of 3
     shorts, where the zeroth member holds the least significant bits.

     All functions share the same multiplicand and addend.

     The srand48() function is used to initialize the internal buffer r(n) of
     drand48(), lrand48(), and mrand48(), such that the 32 bits of the seed
     value are copied into the upper 32 bits of r(n), with the lower 16 bits
     of r(n) arbitrarily being set to 0x330e.  Additionally, the constant mul-tiplicand multiplicand
     tiplicand and addend of the algorithm are reset to the default values
     given above.

     The seed48() function also initializes the internal buffer r(n) of
     drand48(), lrand48(), and mrand48(), but here all 48 bits of the seed can
     be specified in an array of 3 shorts, where the zeroth member specifies
     the lowest bits.  Again, the constant multiplicand and addend of the
     algorithm are reset to the default values given above.  The seed48()
     function returns a pointer to an array of 3 shorts which contains the old
     seed.  This array is statically allocated; thus, its contents are lost
     after each new call to seed48().

     Finally, lcong48() allows full control over the multiplicand and addend
     used in drand48(), erand48(), lrand48(), nrand48(), mrand48(), and
     jrand48(), and the seed used in drand48(), lrand48(), and mrand48().  An
     array of 7 shorts is passed as argument; the first three shorts are used
     to initialize the seed; the second three are used to initialize the mul-tiplicand; multiplicand;
     tiplicand; and the last short is used to initialize the addend.  It is
     thus not possible to use values greater than 0xffff as the addend.

     Note that all three methods of seeding the random number generator always
     also set the multiplicand and addend for any of the six generator calls.

     For a more powerful random number generator, see random(3).

AUTHORS
     Martin Birgmeier

SEE ALSO
     rand(3), random(3)

BSD                             October 8, 1993                            BSD