--- Oliver Kullmann <O.Kullmann@Swansea.ac.uk> wrote:
The problem with the "very quick start" is, that without already understanding the architecture of the library it seems impossible to understand it.
Actually, there was a major change in the library architecture between boost versions 1.30 and 1.31. The change had to do with conformance to the WG21 specification, available at this link: <http://www.boost.org/libs/random/wg21-proposal.html>
It should be quite a bit longer, with output and some explanations.
The main page also provides a link to a working program, random_demo.cpp, with quite a bit more detailed comments than what I've already provided.
boost::variate_generator<BaseRNG&,UniformDist> your_generator(rng, dist);
Note the ampersand; your program will fail silently if you omit it.
I don't understand the need for the reference type --- otherwise the object rng would be copied, which should also be alright?!
Nope. Withoout the reference type, a call like: int random_number = your_generator(); would invoke the constructor instead of the () member operator; hence, the silent failure.
Perhaps one should emphasise, that models of pseudo-random generators are models of uniform random generators,
Yes, it says so in the concept documentation, which the reader is told to look at first, although the "emphasis" is rather weak, IMHO.
and that also for example uniform_int yields a model of a uniform random generator.
Not quite. uniform_int models a uniform distribution over which random number generators should generate random numbers. variate_generator is the front-end number generator that applies the distribution constraint to the base random number generator.
Inclusion of something like the above explanations into the documentation would already help a lot!
Ideally, it would be so. The problem here is when Jens Maurer will find the time; presumably he's also working on improving the above-mentioned WG21 spec and preparing for the upcoming 1.32 release. Cromwell Enage __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail