On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 17:07, James Cook
On Aug 16, 2011, at 4:04 PM, Evan Laforge wrote:
I've noticed there's a convention to put modules having to deal with randomness into System.Random. I thought System was for OS interaction? Granted getting a random seed usually means going to the OS, but isn't the rest of it, like generating random sequences, distributions, selecting based on probability, shuffling, etc. all non-OS related algorithms?
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.
I'd be tempted to guess that the whole reason it's under System is the IO component. -- brandon s allbery allbery.b@gmail.com wandering unix systems administrator (available) (412) 475-9364 vm/sms