Question

I have a for loop that runs 15 times, with dh.setDoors() in every iteration.

What setDoors does is call srand(time(0)), then whenever a random number is needed it’ll use, for example, carSetter = rand()%3+1. Alternatively, it may use decider = rand()%2+1.

Now, normally decider and carSetter are used in a different ways, but I suspected a problem and made it print out carSetter and decider at every iteration. Here’s what came out:

Door 1 has car
Decider is 2
Door 1 has car
Decider is 2
Door 1 has car
Decider is 2
Door 1 has car
Decider is 2
Door 1 has car
Decider is 2
etc...

The values ‘1’ and ‘2’ change when I run it multiple times, but are still the same throughout the 15 times.

Since the loop is running 15 different times, shouldn’t carSetter and decider print out a different random number every iteration?

When I don’t have srand(time(0)), it works as expected, but there’s no seed set, so it’s the same sequence of “random” numbers each time, so it’s probably a problem with the seed?

Answer 1

When you call srand(x), then the value of x determines the sequence of pseudo-random numbers returned in following calls to rand(), depending entirely on the value of x.

When you’re in a loop and call srand() at the top:

while (...) {
    srand(time(0));
    x = rand();
    y = rand();
}

then the same random number sequence is generated depending on the value that time(0) returns. Since computers are fast and your loop probably runs in less than a second, time(0) returns the same value each time through the loop. So x and y will be the same each iteration.

Instead, you only usually need to call srand() once at the start of your program:

srand(time(0));

while (...) {
    x = rand();
    y = rand();
}

In the above case, x and y will have different values each time through the loop.