Re: [MIT-Scheme-devel] feature request

[naruto canada]

On 9/16/08, Taylor R Campbell <address@hidden> wrote:
>    Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2008 17:38:03 +0000
>    From: "naruto canada" <address@hidden>
>
>    May I request a feature that would work like "date +%s%N", ie a finer
>    time function then the current  "(get-universal-time)".
>
> `%s' in strftime(3) [and date(1)] means the number of seconds since
> the epoch.  If you want this value, you can subtract the epoch, in the
> variable named EPOCH, from the value returned by GET-UNIVERSAL-TIME.
>
> What does %N mean?  It's not a standard strftime(3) format.

date --version
date (GNU coreutils) 6.12
Copyright (C) 2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Written by David MacKenzie.


>
>    This is for gen-sym that would work in multiple processes on the
>    same machine to ensure absolute unique symbols.
>
> Why don't you just generate, say, 128 random bits?
>

how do you do that in mit-scheme without possibly multiple processes
getting the same time as entropy?