Serialize random state/seed?

[Pedro Gimeno]

Jan Wielemaker wrote:

> :-(  The choice for using mpz_t suggests that the state can be seen as
> one array.  Right?

No, the choice for using mpz_t is due to historical reasons (the old
linear congruential generator that I doubt anyone will use nowadays,
used an mpz_t for its state). When the new RNG infraestructure was
planned, there was a need for an extra pointer in a way that didn't
imply losing binary level compatibility, in order to store the state of
the generator, and the only other pointer available was that in the
_mp_d member of _mp_seed.

(peeks at the code...)

You're actually lucky that someone included the size in the _mp_alloc
field of the struct, as my original patch didn't :)

For the Mersenne Twister generator (currently the default one), the
pointer in the _mp_d member points to a gmp_rand_mt_struct. As can be
seen in randmt.h, it doesn't contain any further pointers. It contains
an array of 624 gmp_uint_least32_t values, and one int with a value that
ranges from 0 to 623. Size of int can vary, and gmp_uint_least32_t
probably can too, therefore taking the content as-is might not be a good
idea if the intention is to save/restore it in a portable way. For MT,
for cross-platform serialization purposes, I would include two bytes
with the integer and 624*4 bytes with the array; a total of 2498 bytes
of serial data.

In the case of a linear congruential generator, the state pointer points
to a gmp_rand_lc_struct structure, which in turn contains two mpz_t's
with their respective pointers and allocations. If you also want to
support the LCG, good luck...

If you want to add support for the Mersenne Twister generator, I'd
advise you to explicitly request it, as opposed to a default generator,
in order to be safer against compatibility issues that could arise with
potential future versions of GMP, in case the default generator changes.
But keep in mind that you'd be relying on GMP internals that are not
guaranteed to not change. That's a very bad idea.

For best guarantees of compatibility with future versions, the best
advice I can give is to throw away GMP's random generation functions and
create your own generator that yields mpz's.

Hope that helps.

-- Pedro Gimeno