On May 27, 6:10*am, InuY4sha wrote:

> I'm trying to get a random seed for srand function, but it seems like
> I can't use the time as seed, since the only function available among
> the libraries that allows this is ctime, and when I use it inside my
> code I pass from 39Kb of binary to 52Kb or so.. This size exceeds my
> available memory... is there any other way to get a random seed?
> Or, maybe, is there a way to tell the compiler to just use the ctime
> function and forget about all the rest of the library?
> I'm programming on a C5471 Texas Instruments DSP.. and I don't see any
> other way of getting a genuine random event as seed... I mean...
> everything is not really random, but the time you start running the
> code...

What hardware do you have? Surely you have something that you can get
some randomness from. If you have, for example, an A-to-D converter,
you count the number of consecutive samples with the last significant
bit set, followed by the number with it cleared, followed by the
number with it set, and use those numbers to form a seed. (Possibly
with a multiply, count bits, add, repeat algorithm.)

DS

InuY4sha writes:
> I'm trying to get a random seed for srand function, but it seems like
> I can't use the time as seed, since the only function available among
> the libraries that allows this is ctime, and when I use it inside my
> code I pass from 39Kb of binary to 52Kb or so.. This size exceeds my
> available memory... is there any other way to get a random seed?
> Or, maybe, is there a way to tell the compiler to just use the ctime
> function and forget about all the rest of the library?
> I'm programming on a C5471 Texas Instruments DSP.. and I don't see any
> other way of getting a genuine random event as seed... I mean...
> everything is not really random, but the time you start running the
> code...

Does your C5471 Texas Instruments DSP run Unix? If not, why ask here?

--
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) kst-u@mib.org
Nokia
"We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this."
-- Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, "Yes Minister"