Re: rand('state',0)

[Quentin Spencer]

Steve C. Thompson wrote:

> I'm collaborating with MATLAB users and they have
> rand('state',0) in their code.  According to 
> <http://www.mathworks.com/access/helpdesk/help/techdoc/ref/rand.html>
> this is used in MATLAB to ``set rand to its default initial
> state''.  This command produces an error in Octave, however:
>
>  octave:1> rand('state',0)
>  error: rand: unrecognized string argument
>  

What version of octave are you using? I don't get this error with 2.9.3. 
I haven't tried 2.1.71.

> Can someone tell me if by simply commenting out this line of
> code will have any side effects?
>  
The purpose of doing something like this is usually to make simulations 
involving random number generation repeatable. Removing this line will 
probably not break the code, but it could make it non-repeatable. Matlab 
and Octave don't have the same random number generator, so even with 
this line, you won't be able to duplicate exactly the random numbers 
generated in the two programs. If that's important, David Bateman posted 
some code to achieve that earlier this year, but it involves changing 
Matlab's random number generation.

-Quentin



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