Documentation - C API
Random number generator

Table of Contents

Author
Andrea Vedaldi

The module random.h implements random number generation in VLFeat. The generator is based on the popular Mersenne Twister algorithm matsumoto98mersenne (which is the same as MATLAB random generator from MATLAB version 7.4 onwards).

Getting started

In VLFeat, a random number generator is implemented by an object of type VlRand. The simplest way to obtain such an object is to get the default random generator by

VlRand * rand = vl_get_rand() ;
vl_int32 signedRandomInteger = vl_rand_int31(rand) ;
@code
Note that there is one such generator per thread (see
::vl_get_rand). If more control is desired, a new ::VlRand object can
be easily created. The object is lightweight, designed to be
allocated on the stack:
@code
VlRand rand ;
vl_rand_init (&rand) ;

The generator can be seeded by vl_rand_seed and vl_rand_seed_by_array. For instance:

vl_rand_seed (&rand, clock()) ;

The generator can be used to obtain random quantities of various types:

There is no need to explicitly destroy a VlRand instance.