note 16504 added to function.srand

The need to seed. You might run a script like this: echo mt_rand(0,99999999); a bunch of times, say by pressing Refresh in the browser, and get a different result each time. That is dependent on your web server. If the same apache/mod-php process lives through several invocations of the script, it won't reset the seed each time. But every php process will start with the same seed. If php is invoked as an external cgi, seed will always be the same. So... always seed! -- http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.srand.php http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=edit+16504 http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+16504 http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=reject+16504