NEWS.md

In ironseed: Improved Random Number Generator Seeding

ironseed 0.2.0

Breaking Changes

• Avalanche behavior and observed randomness were improved by including additional bit mixing at the end of hashing. This changes the calculation of all ironseeds and seed streams, but allows the algorithms to pass PractRand tests.
• When hashing a string, ironseed now includes the length of the string in the hash. This avoids input collision for two strings that are of different length but correspond to the same set of 32-bit values due to padding.

New Features

• New with_ironseed() and local_ironseed() functions to temporarily change the .Random.seed state.
• New streaming API: ironseed_stream() function returns a function that can be called multiple times to generate a stream of output seeds. There are also new with_ironseed_stream() and local_ironseed_stream() functions as well.
• ironseed() gained a new methods parameter to control which methods are used for input seeds. The following methods are supported (in order of default precedence)
• "dots" extracts one or more seeds from arguments passed to ironseed().
• "args" extracts one or more seeds from the command line.
• "env" extracts a seed from an environment variable named "IRONSEED".
• "auto" extracts seeds from local sources of system entropy.
• "null" uses a default seed.
• Automatically generated ironseeds will now use also use entropy from hostnames and cluster job ids (if present).

Miscellaneous fixes and features

• New set_ironseed(...) function to wrap ironseed(..., set_seed = TRUE)
• New create_ironseed() function to construct an ironseed from objects. This function has a stricter interface than ironseed() and is useful for internal usage.
• ironseed() now requires ... arguments to be unnammed.
• Better support for MacOS and PowerPC (from Sergey Fedorov @barracuda156)
• Better support for *BSD systems
• Better support for big-endian systems

ironseed 0.1.0

• Initial CRAN submission.

ironseed documentation built on Aug. 21, 2025, 5:49 p.m.