Hi,
Tethys wrote:
> Since it's not guaranteed to be present, why not just ignore $RANDOM
> and use our own randomly generated integer instead? Something like:
>
> groff_rand=$(dd if=/dev/urandom bs=8 count=1 2>/dev/null | sum | sed
> 's/^0*//;s/ .*//')
> tmp="$d/eqn2graph$groff_rand"
>
> should work and be portable. I think pretty much everywhere supports
> /dev/urandom, right?
Nope. :-)
> If not we could use /dev/random with the minimal
> chance of it blocking.
That neither AIUI.
My awk(1posix), package manpages-posix, makes clear that
$ awk 'BEGIN {srand(); print int(rand() * 0x8000)}'
16769
$
should be a portable replacement for bash's RANDOM, though it gives the
same answer for the whole second. Can we count on a POSIX awk, i.e. not
oawk still called awk; Hi Solaris! More digits,
awk 'BEGIN {srand(); print substr(sprintf("%.8f", rand()), 3)}'
Cheers, Ralph.
