An Ada implementation of Marsaglia's universal random number generator

Abstract

A useful feature found in most programing languages, but missing from Ada, is a standard predefined (pseudo) random number generator. In this article we present an Ada implementation a "universal" (i.e., portable) random number generator developed by George Marsaglia. This implementation generates real numbers with 24-bit fractions, uniform on the interval (0,1). We also show a sample program along with the resulting random numbers that were generated by executing that program on a Sun workstation under UNIX.