Question

Is there a function for obtaining uniformly distributed pseudo-random integers in some specified range? I could write my own function using rand, but this seems like a common enough situation that there’s probably something in the STL for it.

Answer 1

Boost provides many tools for random number generation.
For uniform distributions you have this one:

http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_49_0/doc/html/boost/random/uniform_real_distribution.html

EDIT: updated to include the new C++11 implementation. For the case of integers, here you have the reference:

http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/numeric/random/uniform_int_distribution

A simple example would be:

#include <random>
#include <iostream>
int main()
{
    std::random_device rd;
    std::mt19937 gen(rd());
    std::uniform_int_distribution<> dis(1, 6);
    for(int n=0; n<10; ++n)
        std::cout << dis(gen) << ' ';
    std::cout << '\n';
}