Thank you for the quick reply!  But I wouldn't have bothered you if the documentation stated something to the effect of "While it's platform-dependent, if setseed() is not called, the random number generator is generally seeded by whatever method the operating system provides as a source of randomness, such as /dev/urandom on Linux/Unix, or <???> on Windows."

Just a suggestion, hope this helps, and thanks again!

Carl

Carl Sopchak <carl@sopchak.me> writes:

    <p>There is one point about the documentation for random() and
      setseed() that is missing.  What is used to seed random() if
      setseed() isn't called first?  I assume it's something like
      /dev/random or /dev/urandom, but that's just a guess.  Can someone
      please enlighten me?</p>

We don't document this because it's platform- and version-dependent,
but yeah, generally /dev/urandom or local equivalent.

			regards, tom lane