internal states. Put the old .seed() (which could only get at about
the square root of the # of possibilities) under the new name .whseed(),
for bit-level compatibility with older versions. This occurred to me
while reviewing effbot's book (he found himself stumbling over .seed()
more than once there ...).
got broken). Also added new method .jumpahead(N). This finally gives us
a semi-decent answer to how Python's RNGs can be used safely and efficiently
in multithreaded programs (although it requires the user to use the new
machinery!).
functionality of, whrandom.py. Also closes all the "XXX" todos in
random.py. New frequently-requested functions/methods getstate() and
setstate(). All exported functions are now bound methods of a hidden
instance. Killed all unintended exports. Updated the docs.
FRED: The more I fiddle the docs, the less I understand the exact
intended use of the \var, \code, \method tags. Please review critically.
GUIDO: See email. I updated NEWS as if whrandom were deprecated; I
think it should be.
The attached patches update the standard library so that all modules
have docstrings beginning with one-line summaries.
A new docstring was added to formatter. The docstring for os.py
was updated to mention nt, os2, ce in addition to posix, dos, mac.
Miller, who complained that its kurtosis was bad, and then fixed by
Lambert Meertens (author of the original algorithm) who discovered
that the mathematical analysis leading to his solution was wrong, and
provided a corrected version. Mike then tested the fix and reported
that the kurtosis was now good.
Tim Peters
Guido van Rossum