Subject: Re: bug#9103: 23.3.50; random* from cl does not support the whole range of integers

From: Stefan Kangas <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2021 11:58:14 -0400

Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <[email-masked]> writes:

>> Glenn Morris wrote:
>>
>>> Why does random* even need to exist? What can it do that plain random
>>> cannot?
>>
>> ...non-integer results, it seems.

(That's `cl-random' these days.)

> and then make it into a floating point if it floats?

The Common Lisp version of `random' supports float and integer values
depending on what type its argument has.  I guess that's what
`cl-random' is based on.

I'm not sure if we can change `random' to do the same.  But if there is
a need for random floating point numbers, it does seem unfortunate that
we only have that functionality in CL-Lib.