Re: custom random number generator

[TJPride]

I think you'll like this. Not only does it randomize your values for you, but it gives a visual display of the result so you can see the distribution. Change the weight to see how it affects things - larger numbers mean closer to $x, smaller means further, with 1 being classic bell curve.

use strict;
use warnings;

my ($x, $y, $weight, @r) = (5, 10, 2);

push @r, multirand($x, $y, $weight) for 1..10000;
display(\@r, 50);

sub multirand {
    my ($x, $y, $weight) = @_;
    return $x * $y ** (rand() ** $weight * (rand() > 0.5 ? 1 : -1));
}

sub display {
    my ($r1, $max) = @_;
    my (@r2, $skip, $i);

    $skip = ($#$r1 + 1) / 40;
    @r2 = sort { $a <=> $b } @$r1;
    
    for ($i = 0; $i <= $#r2; $i += $skip) {
        print 'x' x ($r2[$i] / $max * 80 + 0.5) . "\n";
    }
}

Output:

x
x
x
xx
xx
xx
xxx
xxx
xxx
xxxx
xxxx
xxxxx
xxxxx
xxxxxx
xxxxxx
xxxxxxx
xxxxxxx
xxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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