Re: [Bug-gsl] alternatives to gsl_rng_fwrite

[Brian Gough]

At Fri, 6 Mar 2009 13:00:45 -0800,
Brian Austin wrote:
> There are two aspects that I'd would like to change.
> 
> 1. Write the rng state in a non-binary format so that I can read it on
> a different computer from where I wrote it.
> 
> 2. Write the rng state to a string instead of a file.
> This will give user more freedom to format the file.
> For example, I'd like to store a set of rng states in the nodes of an xml 
> file.

Thanks for your email.  There's a problem that the rng states are a
mixture of integer and floating-point types and are not easy to
serialise in C, in any general way. While it would be possible, it
seems like a major task.  Do you have an example in mind where would
this is needed?

If you want to access the state data directly, the gsl_rng_state and
gsl_rng_size functions should give all the information needed to
access the state, and e.g. copy it into another area of memory.

-- 
Brian Gough