This has been implemented in pure XSLT 1 and is part of FXSL since 2002:
http://fxsl.sourceforge.net/articles/Random/Casting%20the%20Dice%20with%20FXSL-htm.htm
There is generation of the "next" random number from the "current"
(essentially a functional composition, where the n-th random number
is f^N(seed), generation of a random sequence, generation of a
sequence of numbers with probability distributions over
non-overlapping intervals, etc.
There is even Monte-Carlo Integration method - based test :)
Cheers,
Dimitre
On Tue, May 6, 2014 at 9:54 AM, Michael Kay mike(_at_)saxonica(_dot_)com
<xsl-list-service(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com> wrote:
The W3C WGs are looking at the idea of introducing a random-number function
of some kind in XPath 3.1. The challenge of course is making this both usable
and a pure function with no side-effects. We have various design ideas which
we need to test against requirements.
If you have any applications that use or need such a function, please could I
have a brief description of the way it uses random numbers, e.g. just wanting
a single random number, a random permutation of 52 integers, an arbitrary
sequence of random numebrs for test data generation, etc.
If you're currently using the EXSLT random-sequence() function, please share
your experience with it.
Michael Kay
Saxonica
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