After some experimenting it seems that I've been doing random numbers in
CBM BASIC completely wrong all of these years. Worse still, all of the
examples in the printed literature at the time had the wrong example as
well. I assume this is because firstly 
the least efficient way is more human readable, and secondly it would allow
the range of numbers to exceed a 16-bit signed integer range.

Here is the fastest way to make peusdo-random numbers happen inside the CBM
BASIC interpreter, assuming you want a positive integer of between zero and
R:

X%=RND(.)*R

So, if you require a number higher than +32767, this is the fastest way:

X=INT(RND(.)*R)

The ordering seems to be important for optimisation as well, as R*RND(.) is
slower because the interpreter re-orders the calculation on the fly
according to its precedence.

I was never made aware of any of these facts as a child BASIC programmer.

Regards,

Shaun.

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