LibC: Implement uniform random sampling without modulo bias

This commit is contained in:
Ben Wiederhake 2021-01-19 19:42:31 +01:00 committed by Andreas Kling
parent e849c62f55
commit ab07a713bf
Notes: sideshowbarker 2024-07-18 23:02:33 +09:00

View file

@ -1039,9 +1039,22 @@ void arc4random_buf(void* buffer, size_t buffer_size)
uint32_t arc4random_uniform(uint32_t max_bounds)
{
// XXX: Should actually apply special rules for uniformity; avoid what is
// called "modulo bias".
return arc4random() % max_bounds;
// If we try to divide all 2**32 numbers into groups of "max_bounds" numbers, we may end up
// with a group around 2**32-1 that is a bit too small. For this reason, the implementation
// `arc4random() % max_bounds` would be insufficient. Here we compute the last number of the
// last "full group". Note that if max_bounds is a divisor of UINT32_MAX,
// then we end up with UINT32_MAX:
const uint32_t max_usable = UINT32_MAX - (static_cast<uint64_t>(UINT32_MAX) + 1) % max_bounds;
uint32_t random_value = arc4random();
for (int i = 0; i < 20 && random_value > max_usable; ++i) {
// By chance we picked a value from the incomplete group. Note that this group has size at
// most 2**31-1, so picking this group has a chance of less than 50%.
// In practice, this means that for the worst possible input, there is still only a
// once-in-a-million chance to get to iteration 20. In theory we should be able to loop
// forever. Here we prefer marginally imperfect random numbers over weird runtime behavior.
random_value = arc4random();
}
return random_value % max_bounds;
}
char* realpath(const char* pathname, char* buffer)