G> From: "Geo" 

 G> "John Beckett"  wrote in
 G> message news:41b2a4bc.23977267{at}216.144.1.254...

>> for (int i=1; i<=rand(); i++) { /* do something */ }
>>
>> I guess it doesn't matter, but this loop will call rand
>> every time the loop is entered. This does nothing helpful.

 G> It's a way of randomizing it because if you run the function
 G> twice quickly the time function doesn't provide very good seed
 G> values. The idea was to use the rand() function more to
 G> generate a better random value. IE, I want rand() called
 G> multiple times.

FWIW: this likely doesn't really return as random a seed as you'd like...
back when i was doing a lot more coding than i do these days, there was a
lot of discussion on setting the random seed several times to achieve
"more random" sequences... many tests and a lot of mathematical
analysis showed that what actually happened was more predictability rather
than more randomness...

i can't really add much more than that...

)\/(ark