I am using .NET to create an artificial life program and I am using C#'s pseudo random class defined in a Singleton. The idea is that if I use the same random number generator throughout the application, I could merely save the seed and then reload from the seed to recompute a certain interesting run.
public sealed class RandomNumberGenerator : Random
{
private static readonly RandomNumberGenerator instance = new RandomNumberGenerator();
RandomNumberGenerator()
{
}
public static RandomNumberGenerator Instance
{
get
{
return instance;
}
}
}
I also wanted a method that could give me two different random numbers.
public static Tuple<int, int> TwoDifferentRandomNumbers(this Random rnd, int minValue, int maxValue)
{
if (minValue >= maxValue)
throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("maxValue", "maxValue must be greater than minValue");
if (minValue + 1 == maxValue)
return Tuple.Create<int, int>(minValue, maxValue);
int rnd1 = rnd.Next(minValue, maxValue);
int rnd2 = rnd.Next(minValue, maxValue);
while (rnd1 == rnd2)
{
rnd2 = rnd.Next(minValue, maxValue);
}
return Tuple.Create<int, int>(rnd1, rnd2);
}
The problem is that sometimes rnd.Next(minValue,maxValue
always returns minValue
. If I breakpoint at this point and try creating a double and setting it to rnd.NextDouble()
, it returns 0.0. Anyone know why this is happening?
I know that it is a pseudo random number generator, but frankly, I hadn't expected it to lock at 0. The random number generator is being accessed from multiple threads... could this be the source of the problem?
EDIT : Thanks, the problem ended up being thread safety.
This is the new version of the class.
public sealed class RandomNumberGenerator : Random
{
private static Random _global = new Random();
[ThreadStatic]
private static Random _localInstance;
RandomNumberGenerator()
{
}
public static Random Instance
{
get
{
Random inst = _localInstance;
if (inst == null)
{
int seed;
lock (_global) seed = _global.Next();
_localInstance = inst = new Random(seed);
}
return _localInstance;
}
}
}
C programming language is a machine-independent programming language that is mainly used to create many types of applications and operating systems such as Windows, and other complicated programs such as the Oracle database, Git, Python interpreter, and games and is considered a programming foundation in the process of ...
In the real sense it has no meaning or full form. It was developed by Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson at AT&T bell Lab. First, they used to call it as B language then later they made some improvement into it and renamed it as C and its superscript as C++ which was invented by Dr.
What is C? C is a general-purpose programming language created by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Laboratories in 1972. It is a very popular language, despite being old. C is strongly associated with UNIX, as it was developed to write the UNIX operating system.
C is a general-purpose language that most programmers learn before moving on to more complex languages. From Unix and Windows to Tic Tac Toe and Photoshop, several of the most commonly used applications today have been built on C. It is easy to learn because: A simple syntax with only 32 keywords.
The Random
class is not thread-safe.
You should make your static
instance [ThreadStatic]
, or protect it with a lock.
If you use only One RNG for multiple threads even if you save the seed, you won't be able to generate the same numbers the next time you launch your application because you won't be sure that the calls to the RNG from the different threads will be in the same order.
If you have a fixed/known number of thread make a RNG per Thread and save each seed.
Forget what I just said if you're 100% sure that each thread will call the RNG with exactly the same order as the last time if you use the same seed.
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