Re: rand() precision low, looking for a fast way to get high precision rand float?

[BrowserUk]

I want if() to be true at a rate of 1/40.000, however, rand() is not precise enough and outputs 0 quite often

That's not the way random works. It doesn't guarantee 1/40000, if it did, it would not be "random".

It only guarantees that the ratio will tend towards 1/40000 over time.

Most times it will produce 1/40000; but sometimes it will be 0/40000; sometimes 2/40000; occasionally 3/40000; very occasionally even 4/40000; but over time they will tend to balance each other out and the ratio will tend to get closer and closer to 1/40000.

Try running this for a while to see how it works:

#! perl -slw
use strict;
use Math::Random::MT qw[ rand ];
use constant LIMIT => 1 / 40000;

$|++;

my( $aveTrue, $aveFalse ) = (0,0);
while( 1 ) {
    my( $true, $false ) = (0,0);
    for( 1 .. 40000 ) {
        if( rand() < LIMIT ) {
            ++$true;
        }
        else {
            ++$false;
        }
    }
    $aveTrue += $true;
    $aveFalse += $false;
    printf "\rThis time: $true/$false; Accumulate ratio: %f / 40000", 
+$aveTrue / ( $aveFalse / 40000 );
}

__END__
C:\test>1001701.pl
This time: 0/40000; Accumulate ratio: 0.995570 / 40000

If you need to always get one true from every 40,000, then use:

use List::Util qw[ shuffle ];

my @numbs = shuffle 1 .. 40000;

for my $num ( @numbs ) {
    if( $num == 1 ) {
        ...
    }
}