Re: [open-cobol-list] RANDOM-ly non-random

[Bruce M. Axtens]

On 31/05/2013 11:11 AM, address@hidden wrote:
> Hello, Bruce
>
> OpenCOBOL RANDOM returned biased value.
>
> It is look like conacatinate '0.' and int(rand()*(2**32)) .
>
> so, you execute this.
>
> perl -e '$a = 0; for (1..1000) {$p = int(rand() * (2 ** 31)) ;$a +=
> "0.".$p; }; print $a ;print "\n";'
>
> it will show about 347 instead of 500.
>
> Since it is wrong, we have to correct libcob.so.
It's times like these when one wishes that OpenCOBOL had for bugs what 
TeX has: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuth_reward_check>. It'd be nice 
to have in a frame on the wall an official looking certificate saying 
that I found a bug in OpenCOBOL.