Home Original page

[Python-Dev] Time for a change of random number generator?

Stephen J. Turnbull stephen at xemacs.org
Thu Feb 11 22:19:15 EST 2016 
Steven D'Aprano writes:

 > Peters has an opinion?) but if we do change, I'd like to see the 
 > existing random.Random moved to random.MT_Random for backwards 
 > compatibility and compatibility with other software which uses MT. Not 
 > necessarily saying that we have to keep it around forever (after all, we 
 > did dump the Wichmann-Hill PRNG some time ago) but we ought to keep it 
 > for at least a couple of releases.

I think we should keep it around forever.  Even my slowest colleagues
are learning that they should record their seeds and PRNG algorithms
for reproducibility's sake. :-)  For that matter, restore Wichmann-Hill.
Both should be clearly marked as "use only for reproducing previous
bitstreams" (eg, in a package random.deprecated_generators).
More information about the Python-Dev mailing list