[Openmcl-devel] Slime / CCL interaction: random returning the same value

[R. Matthew Emerson]

On Dec 13, 2009, at 7:24 PM, Patrick May wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> 	I raised the following issue on the Slime mailing list and got a couple of helpful responses that at least explained why I was seeing what I was seeing:
> 
>>>>> 	I'm using Slime in Aquamacs with CCL.  When I evaluate (random
>>>>> 100) repeatedly in CCL started from a shell, I get a randomly
>>>>> generated  number between 0 and 99 inclusive.  When I do the same with
>>>>> C-x C-e  within Slime, I get the same number every time.  (random 100
>>>>> (make-random-state)) gives the same behavior, but
>>>>> (random 100 (make-random-state t)) works properly.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 	Is Slime caching something or have I hosed up my environment?
>>>> 
>>>> Sorry for the late response.  CCL's swank backend uses threads by
>>>> default, and threads inherit values from the global
>>>> environment. *RANDOM-STATE* probably becomes thread-local automatically
>>>> in CCL, resulting in the behaviour you described.
>>>> 
>>>> It should work when you type in the form at the Slime REPL which
>>>> evaluates all forms in the same thread.
> 
> Some poking around with the Slime documentation shows that I can change swank:*communication-style* from :SPAWN to :SIGIO or :FD-HANDLER to avoid this issue, but :SIGIO has some caveats associated with it.
> 
> 	Is there a way to make the random state not thread local?

Well, not really;  at least not in the sense of being able to say something like
  (setq ccl:*random-state-and-threads-dwim* t).

*random-state* is mutated every time you call RANDOM.  If it were not thread-local, then there would have to be some sort of lock or other mechanism to prevent *random-state* from being modified by more than one thread at a time.

Depending on your application, it might be reasonable to implement something like this yourself, e.g.

(defvar *my-random-state* (make-random-state t))
(defvar *my-random-state-lock* (make-lock))
(defun my-random (n)
  (with-lock-grabbed (*my-random-state-lock*)
    (random n *my-random-state*)))

Or something like that (code typed in mail).