Book Image

Modern C++ Programming Cookbook

By : Marius Bancila
Book Image

Modern C++ Programming Cookbook

By: Marius Bancila

Overview of this book

C++ is one of the most widely used programming languages. Fast, efficient, and flexible, it is used to solve many problems. The latest versions of C++ have seen programmers change the way they code, giving up on the old-fashioned C-style programming and adopting modern C++ instead. Beginning with the modern language features, each recipe addresses a specific problem, with a discussion that explains the solution and offers insight into how it works. You will learn major concepts about the core programming language as well as common tasks faced while building a wide variety of software. You will learn about concepts such as concurrency, performance, meta-programming, lambda expressions, regular expressions, testing, and many more in the form of recipes. These recipes will ensure you can make your applications robust and fast. By the end of the book, you will understand the newer aspects of C++11/14/17 and will be able to overcome tasks that are time-consuming or would break your stride while developing.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

Generating pseudo-random numbers


Generating random numbers is necessary for a large variety of applications, from games to cryptography, from sampling to forecasting. However, the term random numbers is not actually correct, as the generation of numbers through mathematical formulas is deterministic and does not produce true random numbers, but numbers that look random and are called pseudo-random. True randomness can only be achieved through hardware devices, based on physical processes, and even that can be challenged, as one may consider even the universe to be actually deterministic. Modern C++ provides support for generating pseudo-random numbers through a pseudo-random number library containing number generators and distributions. Theoretically, it can also produce true random numbers, but in practice, those could actually be only pseudo-random.

Getting ready

In this recipe, we discuss the standard support for generating pseudo-random numbers. Understanding the difference between random...