matthews@is-next.umd.edu (Mike Matthews) (12/29/90)
I'm trying to make a random sound player for my NeXT, using a shell script and crontab.local. I have everything working just fine, except for one small thing: the random numbers aren't really random. They always start at the same thing. Now, I know a little about how this works, and I know it has something to do with setting the seed (or the state -- I'm using the newer random() function), but how can I set *that* randomly every time the script is run? I essentially do a set num=`random <lo mark> <hi mark>`, then a /usr/bin/sndplay /usr/local/snds/$num.snd, which works, but it always plays the same sound... Any help would be appreciated. I was thinking I could just do a srandom(x) but that would still be a "fixed" random marker, wouldn't it? Please reply by Email to matthews@is-next.umd.edu, and I will post the answer if/when I get it. Thanks again, Mike