Re: Random

17 Dec 2002


      On 17 Dec 2002, Ketil Z. Malde wrote:
...
Mark Carroll  writes:
(snip)
...
Can we still do this concisely and get the new state of the rng back out
the other end after the die has been thrown a few times?
Oops; I missed that part!
No problem - it wasn't exactly clearly part of the original problem
specification. (-: It was good to see what randomRs does, too.
...
...
Or are things like newStdGen meant to be so cheap that it's fine to
use lots of different RNGs instead of one that you thread through
everything?
Also, I was wondering if I can or should use monads to thread the RNG
state through everything instead of always returning these two-tuples;
I've been peering at things like Control.Monad.Cont to try to see what
they're good for.
...
I've no idea - I've always used StdGen's as if they were going out of
style.  (You can, of course, `split` them and get two for the price of
one)
Ah - I was never sure what to make of that - I normally just use the GHC
online Haddockised stuff which tells me no more than the type signatures,
but I suppose "split" must be more than (\x->(x,x))! (-: (I'll be happy to
help with adding documentation once I'm sure of the semantics myself.)

-- Mark