Recommended way to initialize srand?

Question

I need a \'good\' way to initialize the pseudo-random number generator in C++. I\'ve found an article that states:

In order to generate random-like

Answer 1

For those using Visual Studio here's yet another way:

#include "stdafx.h"
#include 
#include  

const __int64 DELTA_EPOCH_IN_MICROSECS= 11644473600000000;

struct timezone2 
{
  __int32  tz_minuteswest; /* minutes W of Greenwich */
  bool  tz_dsttime;     /* type of dst correction */
};

struct timeval2 {
__int32    tv_sec;         /* seconds */
__int32    tv_usec;        /* microseconds */
};

int gettimeofday(struct timeval2 *tv/*in*/, struct timezone2 *tz/*in*/)
{
  FILETIME ft;
  __int64 tmpres = 0;
  TIME_ZONE_INFORMATION tz_winapi;
  int rez = 0;

  ZeroMemory(&ft, sizeof(ft));
  ZeroMemory(&tz_winapi, sizeof(tz_winapi));

  GetSystemTimeAsFileTime(&ft);

  tmpres = ft.dwHighDateTime;
  tmpres <<= 32;
  tmpres |= ft.dwLowDateTime;

  /*converting file time to unix epoch*/
  tmpres /= 10;  /*convert into microseconds*/
  tmpres -= DELTA_EPOCH_IN_MICROSECS; 
  tv->tv_sec = (__int32)(tmpres * 0.000001);
  tv->tv_usec = (tmpres % 1000000);


  //_tzset(),don't work properly, so we use GetTimeZoneInformation
  rez = GetTimeZoneInformation(&tz_winapi);
  tz->tz_dsttime = (rez == 2) ? true : false;
  tz->tz_minuteswest = tz_winapi.Bias + ((rez == 2) ? tz_winapi.DaylightBias : 0);

  return 0;
}


int main(int argc, char** argv) {

  struct timeval2 tv;
  struct timezone2 tz;

  ZeroMemory(&tv, sizeof(tv));
  ZeroMemory(&tz, sizeof(tz));

  gettimeofday(&tv, &tz);

  unsigned long seed = tv.tv_sec ^ (tv.tv_usec << 12);

  srand(seed);

}

Maybe a bit overkill but works well for quick intervals. gettimeofday function found here.

Edit: upon further investigation rand_s might be a good alternative for Visual Studio, it's not just a safe rand(), it's totally different and doesn't use the seed from srand. I had presumed it was almost identical to rand just "safer".

To use rand_s just don't forget to #define _CRT_RAND_S before stdlib.h is included.