DBMS_RANDOM package with negative random numbers ??

From: Rolf Unger <rolf.unger_at_ctilabs.de>
Date: 31 May 2002 09:33:38 -0700
Message-ID: <32fe19ad.0205310833.4343e8d0@posting.google.com>

Hi all,

has anybody experience with the package DBMS_RANDOM on Windows NT?
Is my perspective wrong if I say:
 "Random numbers have to be positiv!"

I have worked with C, Perl, JavaScript, (Visual) Basic and in all those languages (or in their libary functions) random numbers are positiv!
So why not in PL/SQL?
Is there a type cast, that I missed?
Is the problem related to the int representation on WinNT? Or is it due to my rather old Oracle Version 8.0.4?

I included the following code snippet, that makes use of the dbms_random package.

DECLARE
   v_nInt BINARY_INTEGER;
   v_nRandom number(20);
BEGIN
   Select hsecs Into v_nRandom From v$timer;

   dbms_output.put_line( v_nRandom );
   dbms_random.initialize(v_nRandom);
   FOR i IN 1..10
   LOOP
     v_nInt := dbms_random.random();
     v_nRandom := v_nInt;


--     dbms_output.put_line( v_nInt );

     dbms_output.put_line( v_nRandom );

   END LOOP;
   dbms_random.terminate();
END;
/

288330377
-1420311009
-1168730824

1601612920
-408652530

635338897
1636768007
-618724749
-1679183912
-816529764

1734396077

PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.

As you see I also tried to output the BINARY_INTEGER directly with exactly the same results as with the NUMBER variable. Not sure if dbms_output.put_line() is the right way to look at a variable's value, as it probably does some type conversion internally.

Any comment is appreciated.
Thanks, Rolf. Received on Fri May 31 2002 - 11:33:38 CDT