Normal/Gaussian random number generation for D

[Joseph Rushton Wakeling]

On 11/06/2012 07:14 PM, jerro wrote:
> I was only talking about the part of initialization that doesn't use a RNG. I
> agree that everything that uses a RNG should be done in opCall (or inside a
> normal() function in the function interface). For Box-Muller, I think the
> approach you currently use in NormalBoxMullerEngine is the most reasonable one.
> But a Ziggurat engines needs to compute some tables before it can start
> generating samples. It doesn't need a RNG to do that and the tables do not
> change after initialization.

Ahh, OK, clear.  Then obviously your suggested approach is correct.

> There's one change that I think would make the API more convenient. Normal
> struct and the engine don't store an instance of a RNG , so they don't need to
> take it as a template parameter. We could make opCall methods templates instead.
> That way the users would never need to explicitly specify the type of the RNG.

I guess I was concerned about the possibility of a sequence of normal random 
numbers generated by a mix of different RNGs, but to be honest, if someone 
really, really wants to do that, I'm not sure I should stop them. :-)