From: "Geo" 

Why would it return 0? Do I need another set of () around the whole thing?

I see what you are saying about the bias if you use a straight rand()
function but when you divide by RAND_MAX then rand() gives a value between
0 and 1 which should have an even distribution, no?

int n = (rand()/32767)*9999

should give you an even distribution of numbers from 1 to 9999. I guess I
could write a program that loops and tracks the distribution to see,
something fun to play with this weekend.

Geo.

"Paul Ranson"  wrote in message
news:41b5b7cb{at}w3.nls.net...
> That won't fix it, and in fact, will generally return 0...
>
> If 'rand' is well designed then a series of calls of it should return a
> series of numbers between 0 and RAND_MAX (32767 usually) where each number
> occurs with the same frequency, given a long enough series. Obviously for
> any given seed you get the same series each time you call srand. This
isn't
> bias, it's pseudo.
>
> If you disregard any return from rand between 32760 and 32767 then I think
> your distribution of 0-9 will be even. Happy to be proven wrong on this...
>
> Paul
>
> "Geo."  wrote in message
news:41b5aede$1{at}w3.nls.net...
> > well a simple solution to that would be
> >
> > int n = (rand()/RAND_MAX)*99999
> >
> > That should give me a pretty random distribution of the right most 4
> > characters, theoretically with no bias.
> >
> > Geo.(there actually is a bias dependent on the time you run the program)
> >
>
>

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