Re: [boost] Changes to the random number library

From: Matthias Troyer (troyer_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-10-02 14:08:59

Dear Jens,

I've read the document and appreciate the excellent work you have put 
into this.

On Wednesday, October 2, 2002, at 01:10 AM, Jens Maurer wrote:
> I'm still unsure about the choice of engines for standardization.
> Some criteria plus an overview of other libraries is provided
> in the above proposal.

I would opt for having the Mersenne twister, linear congruentials, 
ranlux and the
lagged Fibonacci generators

>  - Added the "ranlux" generator (ranlux.hpp), by request of
> Marc Fischler

Thanks for that, we also want to use it.
>
>  - All generators now have a constructor and seed()
> function that take an iterator range.  The provided
> integer values can be used to initialize the full seed
> of an arbitrary generator.  Also, this is a uniform
> seeding method, also suitable for compound generators
> such as xor_combine that need to seed two source
> generators of arbitrary state size.  I believe this
> interface provides the necessary uniform seeding
> without resorting to global arrays of "good" uint32_t
> seeds or somesuch.

Yes it does, and I should be able to implement all I need on top of 
that interface.

>  - The naming convention is now that floating-point
> valued generators are named lagged_fibonacci_01
> and subtract_with_carry_01 (i.e. a _01 suffix on
> the integer generator).  The lagged_fibonacci didn't
> adhere to this.  I've changed it, that might require
> changes to your code.

No problem, that's just half an hours work but needs a new release
for our libraries based on the Boost library. Is there a macro to 
distinguish the old from the new library, so that our released 
libraries work with both boost-1-29 and the new generators?

Matthias