Question 13.17

Each time I run my program, I get the same sequence of numbers back from rand().


You can call srand to seed the pseudo-random number generator with a truly random initial value. Popular seed values are the time of day, or the elapsed time before the user presses a key (although keypress times are hard to determine portably; see question 19.37). (Note also that it's rarely useful to call srand more than once during a run of a program; in particular, don't try calling srand before each call to rand, in an attempt to get ``really random'' numbers.)

References: K&R2 Sec. 7.8.7 p. 168
ANSI Sec. 4.10.2.2
ISO Sec. 7.10.2.2
H&S Sec. 17.7 p. 393


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