std:: generate_canonical

From cppreference.com
Defined in header <random>
template < class RealType, std:: size_t Bits, class Generator >
RealType generate_canonical ( Generator & g ) ;
(since C++11)

Generates a random floating point number in range [ 0 , 1 ) .

To generate enough entropy, generate_canonical ( ) will call g ( ) exactly k times, where k = max(1, ⌈ b / log 2 R ⌉) and

Parameters

g - generator to use to acquire entropy

Return value

Floating point value in range [ 0 , 1 ) .

Exceptions

None except from those thrown by g .

Notes

Some existing implementations have a bug where they may occasionally return 1.0 if RealType is float GCC #63176 LLVM #18767 MSVC STL #1074 . This is LWG issue 2524 .

Example

Produce random numbers with 10 bits of randomness: this may produce only k * R distinct values.

#include <iostream>
#include <random>
 
int main()
{
    std::random_device rd;
    std::mt19937 gen(rd());
    for (int n = 0; n < 10; ++n)
        std::cout << std::generate_canonical<double, 10>(gen) << ' ';
    std::cout << '\n';
}

Possible output:

0.208143 0.824147 0.0278604 0.343183 0.0173263 0.864057 0.647037 0.539467 0.0583497 0.609219

See also

produces real values evenly distributed across a range
(class template)