Re: setseed accepts bad seeds

Kris Jurka <books@ejurka.com> writes:
> On Wed, 11 Apr 2007, Tom Lane wrote:
>> Kris Jurka <books@ejurka.com> writes:
>>> Why doesn't setseed complain when given a seed value outside of its
>>> expected range?
>>
>> Why should it complain?  The use of the value is totally unspecified
>> anyway.

> Because the user is likely using it incorrectly.

It's not really possible to use it "incorrectly", AFAICS.  Any value you
might pass to it will result in a specific new seed value.  Nowhere is
there any guarantee of what the mapping is, and it's obviously
impossible to guarantee that the mapping is one-to-one, so any user
assumptions about what a specific seed value might "mean" seem broken
regardless.

            regards, tom lane