Re: [PHP6] Merging rand and mt_rand()
Am 23.02.2014 20:08, schrieb Nikita Popov:
> On Sun, Feb 23, 2014 at 7:45 PM, Rouven Weßling <[email protected]>wrote:
>
>> Hello internals,
>>
>> there has already been a lot of talk about improving secure random number
>> generation for PHP6. One thing I'd like to improve as well, would be
>> non-secure random number generation. Here is not so much security at stake
>> but ease of use.
>>
>> The obvious solution, would be to rename mt_rand to rand and make rand an
>> alias. (The same for the supporting functions mt_srand and mt_getrandmax).
>>
>> What I'm missing is the history. What was the reason to keep the separate?
>> Am I missing something?
>>
>> Best regards
>> Rouven
>>
> Changing the random number generation algorithm is a BC break, e.g. tests
> could rely on certain random number sequences for a certain seed. However
> it sounds reasonable to make rand, array_shuffle, str_shuffle etc make use
> of MT 19937 in PHP6, as we have a bit more freedom with breakage.
>
> Nikita
I already wrote down an idea for a very simple bc-safe API:
http://grokbase.com/t/php/php-internals/138wn1sy5g/more-powerful-and-backward-compatible-api-of-random-number-generator-functions
(Can't find the direct link to http://news.php.net/php.internals/????)
Marc
Thread (15 messages)