[Newbies] Generating a predictable 'atRandom' result for testing

[Benjamin Schroeder]

On Aug 12, 2007, at 8:08 PM, Kyle Hamilton wrote:

> If you can test it for lack-of-randomness, I would presume that  
> you're not trying to test the randomness.
>
> I would create a wrapper to 'get number' -- if the test harness is  
> loaded and a flag is set, have that wrapper return an entry from an  
> array or such, and if not, use atRandom.

Building upon this, it looks like there's a variant of atRandom,  
atRandom:, which takes a random-number generator as a parameter.  
These are instances of Random ...

	generator := Random new.
	100 atRandom: generator. "print me"

You can seed the generators, getting the same sequence every time.

	generatorOne := Random new seed: 1000.
	a := 100 atRandom: generatorOne.

	generatorTwo := Random new seed: 1000.
	b := 100 atRandom: generatorTwo.

	a = b "print me; should be true"

The built-in atRandom uses a generator stored in the Collection  
class, accessible via a class-side method.

	Collection randomForPicking

You could always re-seed that one, but I'm not sure this would  
actually reset the sequence; nor am I sure it would be free of ill  
effects to the rest of the system - so using a generator with  
atRandom: might be a good bet! You could seed the generator  
predictably for testing, and use a standard seed usually.

You can explore all this, if you're interested, by looking at  
implementors of atRandom, and following implementors from there.

Hope this helps,
Benjamin Schroeder