Re: sort --random-sort

[Jim Meyering]

Frederik Eaton <address@hidden> wrote:
>> Maybe we need an option to trade off speed for quality,
>> if it makes such a big difference.
>
> Hmm. Maybe there will be a difference. Well, why don't I make
> ISAAC_LOG or ISAAC_WORDS part of isaac_state so that shred and sort
> can use different values? I don't think it will be important for
> 'sort' to use a very strong hash, since crackers only have the order
> of the hash values to go by, and not the values themselves.

This seems like a very good point.
How about having this in rand-isaac.h:

#ifndef ISAAC_LOG
# define ISAAC_LOG 8
#endif

then define ISAAC_LOG to 3 just before including it from sort.c?

If someone (Paul :-) contributes a module that reads /dev/urandom
but reverts to rand-isaac.c-like code as a fall-back source, we can
always switch later.