What's the Right Way to use the rand() Function in C++?

Question

I\'m doing a book exercise that says to write a program that generates psuedorandom numbers. I started off simple with.

#include \"std_lib_facilities.h\"

in         


        

Answer 1

srand() should only be used once:

int randint()
{
    int random = rand();
    return random;
}

int main()
{
    // To get a unique sequence the random number generator should only be
    // seeded once during the life of the application.
    // As long as you don't try and start the application mulitple times a second
    // you can use time() to get a ever changing seed point that only repeats every
    // 60 or so years (assuming 32 bit clock).
    srand(time(NULL));
    // Comment the above line out if you need to debug with deterministic behavior.

    char input = 0;
    cout << "Press any character and enter to generate a random number." << endl;

    while (cin >> input)
    {
        cout << randint() << endl;
    }
    keep_window_open();
}