SF bug #778964: bad seed in python 2.3 random

The default seed is time.time().
Multiplied by 256 before truncating so that fractional seconds are used.
This way, two successive calls to random.seed() are much more likely
to produce different sequences.

Lib/random.py

@@ -94,6 +94,9 @@ class Random(_random.Random):
         If a is not None or an int or long, hash(a) is used instead.
         """
 
+        if a is None:
+            import time
+            a = long(time.time() * 256) # use fractional seconds
         super(Random, self).seed(a)
         self.gauss_next = None
 

Lib/test/test_random.py

@@ -20,7 +20,7 @@ class TestBasicOps(unittest.TestCase):
     def test_autoseed(self):
         self.gen.seed()
         state1 = self.gen.getstate()
-        time.sleep(1.1)
+        time.sleep(0.1)
         self.gen.seed()      # diffent seeds at different times
         state2 = self.gen.getstate()
         self.assertNotEqual(state1, state2)

Misc/NEWS

@@ -25,6 +25,10 @@ Extension modules
 Library
 -------
 
+- random.seed() with no arguments or None uses time.time() as a default
+  seed.  Modified to match Py2.2 behavior and use fractional seconds so
+  that successive runs are more likely to produce different sequences.
+
 - itertools.izip() with no arguments now returns an empty iterator instead
   of raising a TypeError exception.