Re: Select some item of...
Re: Select some item of...
- Subject: Re: Select some item of...
- From: Christopher Nebel <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 16:13:54 -0800
On Nov 3, 2003, at 8:36 PM, Emmanuel wrote:
At 10:57 PM +0000 03/11/03, Peter Beentje wrote:
Yeah, I wrote all my scripts from scratch without reference until
about 2 months ago, pulling myself up by my bootstraps all the way; I
never worked out the syntax for seeding properly. I haven't thought
of a way to combine 'random number with seed of...' and 'set x to
some item of...' either; anyone care to suggest a way?
Suppose you issue one "random number with seed [current date]" (did
not check the syntax) before each "some item", I suppose that this
would fairly well randomize things for you?
Wouldn't work -- "some" and "random number" use completely independent
mechanisms. There is no control provided over the seed used for
"some".
I think I've found the problem: Peter probably somehow changed his
script to now use Unicode text (or perhaps Unicode is being forced upon
him). It seems that "some" for Unicode text uses a different RNG than
other parts of AppleScript (rand(3), to be precise; everyone else uses
randomx), and doesn't bother to seed it at all, so you'll always get
the same sequence. This looks like it's always been the case.
Workaround: coerce to string and get some paragraph of that, or use
"random number".
Incidentally, using "random number with seed current date" works, but
should be fairly unnecessary, since "random number" will seed itself
from the system clock if you don't provide an explicit seed. However,
the clock it uses only changes every 60th of a second, so if you hit it
fast enough, you'll get identical sequences.
--Chris Nebel
AppleScript Engineering
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