Re: Generating pseudo-random integers

[Melikamp The Medley]

On 02/05/2011 03:41 PM, Bob Proulx wrote:
> Please keep discussion on the mailing list, and not to me privately,
> so that all may participate.  Thanks.

Sorry, my bad, I just forgot to change the address. Fixed.

<snippy-snip>

> People are often writing to the mailing list asking to include their
> code in coreutils. I believe that is the same impression
> that everyone else had too.

I don't believe you can guess what other people are thinking with any
kind of certainty. Unless you are "Bob" ;) Also, you keep implying that
I asked to include my code in coreutils. I did not. I was upfront about reusing
as much code as possible. I never had to work with a codebase this size,
so some of my decisions are almost certainly stupid. In particular, if
linking with the existing tree is not a good technical solution and
copying and pasting would be better, I would like to know that.

> This continues the impression.  Here you definitely say that you want
> a program and not a C library.

Yes, I want a program I can call from a shell. I never claimed otherwise.

> I will avoid commenting on the rest of your message.

That's fine. I tried to answer all of your questions about why I, and possibly
others, may want a utility that prints pseudo-random integers. I gave several
arguments for why awk and perl solutions, as good as they are, are deficient
compared to the solution in coreutils. I made a clear case, I thought, for
why I want to extend *my* copy of coreutils with a simple interface for
printing numbers. Since you didn't pose any counter-arguments, I can only
assume that it was convincing enough.