default random object?

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

Bill Baxter wrote:
> I guess I'd find it more useful to have a function that gave a random
> value of a given type, like random_value!(short).  That way you get
> the signed/unsigned specification automatically.  But both could be
> useful.

You can, just pass short values into uniform() or specify type arguments 
for it. Actually uniform() used to ask compulsively for its parameter 
type, but I changed that because it was too verbose for no good reason.

>> * If you're creating a number in the range 0..uint.max+1, you're going to
>> have to be careful in lots of places. You can't get that number from an
>> array length, for example.
>> * I think that hard-core scientific/mathematical users are the main users of
>> the more esoteric cases, and can be expected to get it right (and have no
>> problem with the "[]","()","(]"... notation. I think that what's important
>> for the default is that be correct and obvious for as many cases as
>> possible.
>>
>> The strength of "[)" is that if we can say "ALL ranges in D are [) unless
>> otherwise stated by the user", it's hard to ever justify breaking that
>> convention.
> 
> That sounds reasonable to me.  As long as there's an easy way to also
> create a random number that covers an entire range of a given type
> (perhaps limited to integral types).

It's a good litmus test. With the API suggested by Don, in order to 
generate a random byte you'd have to say:

auto b = uniform!("[]")(rng, byte.min, byte.max);

Is this acceptable?


Andrei