Re: [MIT-Scheme-devel] feature request

[naruto canada]

On 9/16/08, Taylor R Campbell <address@hidden> wrote:
>    Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2008 18:36:18 +0000
>    From: "naruto canada" <address@hidden>
>
>    On 9/16/08, Taylor R Campbell <address@hidden> wrote:
>    > What does %N mean?  It's not a standard strftime(3) format.
>
>    date --version
>    date (GNU coreutils) 6.12
>
> OK, instead of telling me what software you happen to be using, can
> you tell me what information it is that you want?
>
>    > 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?
>
> RANDOM-SOURCE-RANDOMIZE! and MAKE-RANDOM-STATE both seed from
> /dev/urandom if it is available.  Judging by your date(1)
> implementation, I'm guessing you're on a GNU/Linux system, which
> suggests that /dev/urandom will be available, and even if you drain it
> of entropy, it probably won't yield the same seed data anyway to multiple
> different processes.

That is why a nanosecond time function is needed to ensure that no two
processes gets the same value. I will ask on coreutils list what they
use for date +%N.
(I didn't suggest random function because I know they won't work for
this purpose.)


>