Re: Re: cvs: php4 / php.ini-dist php.ini-recommended

At 16:48 25-08-01, Jani Taskinen wrote:

Better question is, do we really want to do this? This doesn't fix anything. It only breaks things. Second, this will make writing portable scripts harder. Yet another ini setting to be checked for.. The only good way of doing this rand() -> mt_rand() change would have been my way (tm) which was rejected. ie. using the mt_* always.

I think that what Jeroen's doing is a good idea. We're dealing with this issue in a too techie manner, and forget that most people just want a random number when they call rand(). I don't think it's too much to ask :) If rand() gives them pseudo random numbers, or predictable random numbers, then it's (usually) not what they're looking for. I guess it's not impossible that someone would actually rely on the fact that given the same seed, you get the same predictable series of random numbers, but it's fairly poor coding, and I don't think it's being used too often (far less often than plain random numbers are, anyway). If somebody wants to get a predictable series, let him ask for it explicitly. Zeev