Copyright © 2000-2002 Per Kraulis, Stockholm Bioinformatics Center, SBC

crng 1.2

Random-number generators (RNGs) implemented as Python extension types coded in C.

Note added 2007-08-23: This package is currently not maintained. It has been largely superceded by the 'random' module in the standard Python distribution.

The Python module crng implements random-number generators (RNGs) based on several different algorithms producing uniform deviates in the open interval (0,1), i.e. exclusive of the end-point values 0 and 1. A few continuous and integer-valued non-uniform deviates are also available. Each RNG algorithm is implemented as a separate Python extension type. The RNG types are independent of each other, but have very similar interfaces. The entire module is implemented as one single C source code file.

See the documentation for more details, and for installation instructions. Also see some basic seminar notes on random numbers.

The GNU General Public License (GPL; see the file gpl.txt) applies.

The changes in version 1.2 are (see also here):

The changes in version 1.1 are listed here.

Version 1.2 (released 23 Oct 2002)
File File size (bytes) Python version System Comment
Source code package crng-1.2.tar.gz 42340 any UNIX Source code, documentation, Setup.in, scripts, but not the precompiled module (gzipped).
Source code files crng.c 173607 any any The single C source code file.
crng_pickle.py 8739 any any Performs setup for using the pickle/cPickle modules to save and retrieve crng type instances.
validate.py 5814 any any Validates the implementation of a few RNG implementations in crng.
profile.py 3672 any any Performs profiling (CPU timing) of the crng implementation.
display.py 6346 any any Displays various non-uniform distributions in a 2D plot using Tkinter.
Installation files setup.py 593 2.0, 2.1, 2.2(?)
1.5.2+Distutils		 any Installation script for Distutils.
Setup.in 179 any UNIX Setup file for compiling the module under UNIX (old installation system).
Documentation doc.html 59183 any any The documentation for the crng module (HTML).
Precompiled crng_21_rh71_i386.so 175558 2.1 Linux Red Hat 7.1, Intel 386 Not gzipped; rename to crng.so for proper operation.
crng_21_rh72_i386.so 175458 2.1 Linux Red Hat 7.2, Intel 386 Not gzipped; rename to crng.so for proper operation.
crng_21_irix65.so 139012 2.1 SGI IRIX 6.5 Not gzipped; rename to crng.so for proper operation.

Here is an example of the basic usage: 

    >>> import crng
    >>> r=crng.ParkMiller(seed=123)
    >>> r()
    0.000962643418909
    >>> r(2)
    (0.179147941609, 0.939454629989)

And here is an example of using a deviate other than the uniform distribution: 

    >>> n=crng.NormalDeviate(rng=crng.Ranlux(), stdev=4.0)
    >>> n(4)
    (0.960612428619, 6.30989834512, -0.972826635646, -2.09557141754)

There are already several RNGs available for Python, notably the standard module random (implementing various random-number distributions) based on whrandom (the Wichmann-Hill algorithm). These are coded in Python, and hence slow. The purpose of the crng module is to provide efficient implementations coded in C of several modern RNG algorithms. The design allows easy comparison and interchange of the RNGs in Python code.

The crng module contains a C interface that allows other Python extension modules to directly call the C function for each RNG implementation. One may thereby attain execution speeds close to those possible for a direct implementation in C, while retaining the flexibility of the Python interface.

Several recent and reasonably well-tested RNGs are available in the crng module. This author is by no means an expert on the subject, but having read some of the recent literature, I would recommend using MT19937; it appears to combine speed of execution with good results in several standard tests of RNG quality. It has an astronomical period of approximately 4.3*106001.