Re: Change seed for every iteration

[Z]

Hermann Peifer via Help-gawk <help-gawk@gnu.org> wrote:

> Hi.
> 
> I am in search of an elegant way to change seed for every iteration that
> my little AWK programme does. There are about 10-100s iterations per
> second, I would guess. Below my current solution.
> 
> Is there a more abvious way to achieve the same (or a better) result,
> e.g. without getline?
> 
> Hermann
> 
> PS: GAWK's strftime does not seem to understand '%N', this is why I am
> using the system's date function.
> 
>          # Initialize random weights and biases
>          cmd = "date +%s%N"
>          while ( ( cmd | getline seed ) > 0 )
>                  srand(seed)
>          close(cmd)

You can load the time(3am) extension to get nanosecs:

        $ gawk -l 'time' 'BEGIN{printf("%.7f\n",gettimeofday())}'
        1699021867.0103779


For randomness I use the following in a silly "Magic 8 Ball" script:

        # generate random integer between 1 and N:
        srand(); R = int(N * rand()) + 1

Z