Random and fork

[Alain Ketterlin]

Julien Le Goff <julien.legoff at gmail.com> writes:

> Today I came accross a behaviour I did not expect in python (I am
> using 2.7). In my program, random.random() always seemed to return the
> same number; it turned out to be related to the fact that I was using
> os.fork.

The random number generator is initialized once, when the module is
first imported. Forking simply duplicates the process in its current
state, so no reinitilization occurs, both (or all) processes' generators
are in the same state, and therefore generate the same sequence.

-- Alain.