RANDOMU bug (and HTML help)

[landsman(at)stars.gsfc.nasa.gov (Wayne Landsman)]

Versions 5.1.1 and 5.2 of IDL have a bug in the RANDOMU (and RANDOMN) function
such that the SEED variable is initialized to the same value at the start of 
each session, rather than being intialized by the system clock (see example 
below).   I believe that so long as one as one stays within one IDL session
that this causes no problems, but if one is, say, combining Monte Carlo 
simulations from different IDL sessions, then the results will be decidedly 
unrandom.

RSI knows about this problem and say that they are giving it very high 
priority for a fix.

On another subject, does anyone know if there is a HTML help distribution for
IDL V5.2, like there was for IDL V5.1?   I couldn't find one on the CD-Rom 
distribution.

--Wayne Landsman                                 landsman@mpb.gsfc.nasa.gov

mpb{landsman}102: idl

IDL> print,!VERSION
{ sparc sunos unix 5.2 Oct 30 1998}
IDL> print,randomu(seed)
     0.415999
IDL> print,randomu(seed)
    0.0919649
IDL> exit

mpb{landsman}102: idl
IDL Version 5.2 (sunos sparc). Research Systems, Inc.

IDL> print,randomu(seed)
    0.415999
IDL> print,randomu(seed)
    0.0919649