std::srand

 

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Pseudo-random number generation

Uniform random bit generators   uniform_random_bit_generator (C++20) Random number engines linear_congruential_engine (C++11) mersenne_twister_engine (C++11) subtract_with_carry_engine (C++11) philox_engine (C++26) Random number engine adaptors discard_block_engine (C++11) independent_bits_engine (C++11) shuffle_order_engine (C++11) Predefined random number generators Non-deterministic random numbers random_device (C++11) Utilities generate_canonical (C++11) seed_seq (C++11) Random number algorithms ranges::generate_random (C++26) C random library rand    srand    RAND_MAX

Random number distributions Uniform distributions uniform_int_distribution (C++11) uniform_real_distribution (C++11) generate_canonical (C++11) Bernoulli distributions bernoulli_distribution (C++11) binomial_distribution (C++11) negative_binomial_distribution (C++11) geometric_distribution (C++11) Poisson distributions poisson_distribution (C++11) exponential_distribution (C++11) gamma_distribution (C++11) weibull_distribution (C++11) extreme_value_distribution (C++11) Normal distributions normal_distribution (C++11) lognormal_distribution (C++11) chi_squared_distribution (C++11) cauchy_distribution (C++11) fisher_f_distribution (C++11) student_t_distribution (C++11) Sampling distributions discrete_distribution (C++11) piecewise_constant_distribution (C++11) piecewise_linear_distribution (C++11)

 

Defined in header <cstdlib>
void srand( unsigned seed );

Seeds the pseudo-random number generator used by std::rand() with the value seed.

If std::rand() is used before any calls to srand(), std::rand() behaves as if it was seeded with srand(1).

Each time std::rand() is seeded with the same seed, it must produce the same sequence of values.

srand() is not guaranteed to be thread-safe.

Parameters

seed

-

the seed value

Return value

(none)

Notes

Generally speaking, the pseudo-random number generator should only be seeded once, before any calls to rand(), at the start of the program. It should not be repeatedly seeded, or reseeded every time you wish to generate a new batch of pseudo-random numbers.

Standard practice is to use the result of a call to std::time(0) as the seed. However, std::time returns a std::time_t value, and std::time_t is not guaranteed to be an integral type. In practice, though, every major implementation defines std::time_t to be an integral type, and this is also what POSIX requires.

Example

Run this code

#include <cstdlib>
#include <ctime>
#include <iostream>
 
int main() 
{
    std::srand(std::time(0)); // use current time as seed for random generator
    std::cout << "Random value on [0, " << RAND_MAX << "]: " << std::rand() << '\n';
}

Possible output:

Random value on [0, 2147483647]: 1373858591

See also

rand	generates a pseudo-random number (function)
RAND_MAX	maximum possible value generated by std::rand (macro constant)
reseed	reseeds the per-thread random engine (function)
C documentation for srand