Re: rand() function

Yup, thanks guys, that was my problem. I completely looked over the srand() part in the manual. One more question though: What does rand() do to the seed? or are the algorithms or whatever it uses way over my head? Thanks Ed "Kris Dahl" <krislists@toolhouse.com> wrote in message news:B58A797A.8A85%krislists@toolhouse.com... > on 7/6/00 5:36 PM, David VanHorn at dvanhorn@cedar.net wrote: > > > Shouldn't you seed the random generator? > > > > Here's what I use to generate random cookies. So far, they look pretty > > daggone random. > > > > srand(date("s")); > > I don't think a seed of date("s") is going to give him the level of > precision that is necessary for a recursively generated random number. > > I.e. if it is executed several times in one second (as a loop like this > would be) it would do exactly what it is doing now. I believe that in PHP > rand seeds itself with the date function if you don't seed it yourself > (other wise it would always return the same 'random' number)... so I would > wager that it would do the exact same thing. > > Try seeding it with something like > srand((double)microtime()*1000000); > which is actually what they suggest in the PHP manual. > > -k > > > > > -- > PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) > To unsubscribe, e-mail: php-general-unsubscribe@lists.php.net > For additional commands, e-mail: php-general-help@lists.php.net > To contact the list administrators, e-mail: php-list-admin@lists.php.net >