Generate random numbers using C++11 random library

Question

As the title suggests, I am trying to figure out a way of generating random numbers using the new C++11 library. I have tried it with this code:<

Answer 1

Stephan T. Lavavej (stl) from Microsoft did a talk at Going Native about how to use the new C++11 random functions and why not to use rand(). In it, he included a slide that basically solves your question. I've copied the code from that slide below.

You can see his full talk here: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/GoingNative/2013/rand-Considered-Harmful

#include 
#include 

int main() {
    std::random_device rd;
    std::mt19937 mt(rd());
    std::uniform_real_distribution dist(1.0, 10.0);

    for (int i=0; i<16; ++i)
        std::cout << dist(mt) << "\n";
}

We use random_device once to seed the random number generator named mt. random_device() is slower than mt19937, but it does not need to be seeded because it requests random data from your operating system (which will source from various locations, like RdRand for example).

---

Looking at this question / answer, it appears that uniform_real_distribution returns a number in the range [a, b), where you want [a, b]. To do that, our uniform_real_distibution should actually look like:

std::uniform_real_distribution dist(1, std::nextafter(10, DBL_MAX));