C in a Nutshell

Name

srand

Synopsis

Initializes the random number generator

#include <stdlib.h>
voidsrand( unsigned n );

The srand() function initializes the random number generator using its argument n as the “seed.” For each value of the seed passed to srand(), subsequent calls to rand() yield the same sequence of “random” numbers. For this reason, a common technique to avoid repetition is to seed srand() with the current time. If you call rand() without having called srand(), the result is the same as if you had called srand() with the argument value 1.

Example

See the example for rand() in this chapter.

See Also

rand()