Re: [Chicken-hackers] Patch to use better PRNG on BSD's

[John Cowan]

Thomas Chust scripsit:

> If we really wanted to include a PRNG in the CHICKEN distribution that
> should satisfy any definition of "good", I would suggest to use a modern
> stream cipher with high throughput, for example SOSEMANUK [1]. But I'm
> not sure whether a suite of cryptographic functions is really something
> that must be included in a language's standard library.

I absolutely agree that a cryptographically safe PRNG has no place in
the core.  But a simple PRNG with good properties shouldn't be a problem.
There are a lot of those: the Mersenne Twister and SRFI 27 reference
algorithm are both strong candidates, widely used.  That seems better than
depending on some random PRNG provided by the OS of unknown reliability.
This is less than a page of code here we are talking about.

-- 
The Imperials are decadent, 300 pound   John Cowan <address@hidden>
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teeth, arms instead of wings, and
dinosaurlike tails).                        --Elyse Grasso