Random float number generation

Question

How do I generate random floats in C++?

I thought I could take the integer rand and divide it by something, would that be adequate enough?

Answer 1

C++11 gives you a lot of new options with random. The canonical paper on this topic would be N3551, Random Number Generation in C++11

To see why using rand() can be problematic see the rand() Considered Harmful presentation material by Stephan T. Lavavej given during the GoingNative 2013 event. The slides are in the comments but here is a direct link.

I also cover boost as well as using rand since legacy code may still require its support.

The example below is distilled from the cppreference site and uses the std::mersenne_twister_engine engine and the std::uniform_real_distribution which generates numbers in the [0,10) interval, with other engines and distributions commented out (see it live):

#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 

output will be similar to the following:

0 ****
1 ****
2 ****
3 ****
4 *****
5 ****
6 *****
7 ****
8 *****
9 ****

The output will vary depending on which distribution you choose, so if we decided to go with std::normal_distribution with a value of 2 for both mean and stddev e.g. dist(2, 2) instead the output would be similar to this (see it live):

-6 
-5 
-4 
-3 
-2 **
-1 ****
 0 *******
 1 *********
 2 *********
 3 *******
 4 ****
 5 **
 6 
 7 
 8 
 9 

The following is a modified version of some of the code presented in N3551 (see it live) :

#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 

std::default_random_engine & global_urng( )
{
    static std::default_random_engine u{};
    return u ;
}

void randomize( )
{
    static std::random_device rd{};
    global_urng().seed( rd() );
}

int main( )
{
  // Manufacture a deck of cards:
  using card = int;
  std::array deck{};
  std::iota(deck.begin(), deck.end(), 0);

  randomize( ) ;  

  std::shuffle(deck.begin(), deck.end(), global_urng());
  // Display each card in the shuffled deck:
  auto suit = []( card c ) { return "SHDC"[c / 13]; };
  auto rank = []( card c ) { return "AKQJT98765432"[c % 13]; };

  for( card c : deck )
      std::cout << ' ' << rank(c) << suit(c);

   std::cout << std::endl;
}

Results will look similar to:

5H 5S AS 9S 4D 6H TH 6D KH 2S QS 9H 8H 3D KC TD 7H 2D KS 3C TC 7D 4C QH QC QD JD AH JC AC KD 9D 5C 2H 4H 9C 8C JH 5D 4S 7C AD 3S 8S TS 2C 8D 3H 6C JS 7S 6S

Boost

Of course Boost.Random is always an option as well, here I am using boost::random::uniform_real_distribution:

#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 

rand()

If you must use rand() then we can go to the C FAQ for a guides on How can I generate floating-point random numbers? , which basically gives an example similar to this for generating an on the interval [0,1):

#include 

double randZeroToOne()
{
    return rand() / (RAND_MAX + 1.);
}

and to generate a random number in the range from [M,N):

double randMToN(double M, double N)
{
    return M + (rand() / ( RAND_MAX / (N-M) ) ) ;  
}