Question

The documentation for the uniform distribution of boost.random says

Note: The current implementation is
buggy, because it may not fill all of
the mantissa with random bits. I’m
unsure how to fill a (to-be-invented)
boost::bigfloat class with random bits
efficiently. It’s probably time for a
traits class.

I have no idea what this means (what is the mantissa?). Does it mean that I shouldn’t use the distribution (in which case why is it in the relase package?)? or is that I should just be careful (not to do what?)

Answer 1

It’s a warning that the current boost::random implementation doesn’t fill all of the bits with the same distribution, so the numbers are “slightly less random” (have fun quantifying that statement) than they could have been.

Chances are, however, that you won’t be able to tell anyway.