Better seed support for (random).

* doc/lispref/numbers.texi (Random Numbers): Document new behavior of
the calls (random) and (random STRING).
* etc/NEWS: Document new behavior of (random), (random "string").
* lisp/play/5x5.el, lisp/play/animate.el, lisp/play/cookie1.el:
* lisp/play/dissociate.el, lisp/play/doctor.el, lisp/play/dunnet.el:
* lisp/play/gomoku.el, lisp/play/landmark.el, lisp/play/mpuz.el:
* lisp/play/tetris.el, lisp/play/zone.el:
* lisp/calc/calc-comb.el (math-init-random-base):
* lisp/play/blackbox.el (bb-init-board):
* lisp/play/life.el (life):
* lisp/server.el (server-use-tcp):
* lisp/type-break.el (type-break):
Remove unnecessary call to (random t).
* lisp/net/sasl.el (sasl-unique-id-function):
Change (random t) to (random), now that the latter is more random.
* lisp/play/life.el (life-initialized): Remove no-longer-needed var.
* lisp/gnus/gnus-sync.el (gnus-sync-lesync-setup):
* lisp/gnus/message.el (message-canlock-generate, message-unique-id):
Change (random t) to (random), now that the latter is more random.
* lisp/org/org-id.el (org-id-uuid):
Change (random t) to (random), now that the latter is more random.
* src/emacs.c (main): Call init_random.
* src/fns.c (Frandom): Set the seed from a string argument, if given.
Remove long-obsolete Gentzel cruft.
* src/lisp.h, src/sysdep.c (seed_random): Now takes address and size, not long.
(init_random): New function.

2 files changed, 10 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/etc/ChangeLog b/etc/ChangeLog
index 11aba88c6a1..f3f244c7e39 100644
--- a/etc/ChangeLog
+++ b/etc/ChangeLog
@@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
+2012-09-01  Paul Eggert  <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>
+
+        Better seeds for (random).
+        * NEWS: Document new behavior of (random), (random "string").
+
 2012-08-28  Andreas Schwab  <schwab@linux-m68k.org>
 
         * charsets/MULE-ethiopic.map: Fix typo in comment.
diff --git a/etc/NEWS b/etc/NEWS
index 14521744670..58298a9a437 100644
--- a/etc/NEWS
+++ b/etc/NEWS
@@ -527,6 +527,11 @@ inefficiency, and not namespace-clean.
 
 * Incompatible Lisp Changes in Emacs 24.3
 
+** (random) by default now returns a different random sequence in
+every Emacs run.  Use (random S), where S is a string, to set the
+random seed to a value based on S, in order to get a repeatable
+sequence in later calls.
+
 ** The function `x-select-font' can return a font spec, instead of a
 font name as a string.  Whether it returns a font spec or a font name
 depends on the graphical library.