rand('twister')

[Joseph Wakeling]

Hello all,

A query about the random number generator in Octave.

In MATLAB there was until recently a problem with the default random
number generator:
http://www2.cs.cas.cz/~savicky/papers/rand2006.pdf

... which could be worked around by calling the random number generator
with,

  rand('twister',seed)

The more recent MATLAB versions apparently use the Mersenne Twister by
default and have removed this option (you need to replace the 'twister'
option with 'state').

Anyway, Octave apparently still accepts the 'twister' option ... so does
it do what I think it does, and generate numbers from the MT algorithm?

I ask because nothing at all is mentioned about it in the current
manual, even as a backwards-compatibility or deprecated feature ... :-)

Thanks & best wishes,

    -- Joe