wanted: way to create a RANDOM-STATE object a known seed

[Nikodemus Siivola]

MAKE-RANDOM-STATE allows copying a random state object, or creating a new randomly initialized one.

It would be useful to be able to initialize the state from a simpler seed value as well, for debugging purposes.
(Documenting the random state format so that people could manually construct them would be another alternative,
but probably less future proof.)

[Faré (fahree)]

This patch fixes that bug AND makes the initialization method identical to the one used by the algorithm authors AND makes (MAKE-RANDOM-STATE T) much less predictable (and useless) than it used to be.

[Faré (fahree)]

I posted that patch ten days ago on the mailing-list (2009-11-29), before the previous release. I hope it makes it in the next release.

[Nikodemus Siivola (nikodemus)]

 status confirmed
 importance wishlist
 tag feature patch

[Faré (fahree)]

Is there anything that is blocking this patch from being committed? Anything that I can help with?

[Nathan Froyd (froydnj)]

I will apply this (or a newer patch found in the archives) to the next release, unless somebody complains before I do. ;)

[Nathan Froyd (froydnj)]

Patch applied in 1.0.35.9. Thanks for your patience.