Random Numbers in Objective-C

Posted on 2009-03-11 by Jan Vantomme
Tags: tutorial

I was working on a simple particle system in Objective-C last weekend and I needed to generate random numbers between -1.0 and 1.0 for it. In Processing this is very easy: I just use random(-1.0, 1.0) and get the random number I want. I didn't find a similar function in Objective-C so I tried writing my own.

Generating random numbers between zero and a positive number is easy. The following line of code generates a random number between 0 and 5.

float randomNum = (rand() / RAND_MAX) * 5;

To generate a random number between two positive numbers is a little trickier. This small piece of code generates a random number between 2 and 5.

// calculate difference between 5 and 2
float diff = 5 - 2;
// generate random number between 0 and 3
// add 2 to the random number
float randomNum = ((rand() / RAND_MAX) * diff) + 2;

I wrote a simple Foundation Tool to test the function. The program below prints 200 random numbers between -2.0 and 5.0 to the console.

randomFloatBetween function

float randomFloatBetween(float smallNumber, float bigNumber)
{
    float diff = bigNumber - smallNumber;
    return (((float) rand() / RAND_MAX) * diff) + smallNumber;
}

Main program

int main (int argc, const char * argv[]) {
    NSAutoreleasePool * pool = [[NSAutoreleasePool alloc] init];
    int i;
    for (i = 1; i <= 200; i++) {
        float a = -2.0;
        float b = 5.0;
        float randomNumber1 = randomFloatBetween(a, b);
        NSLog(@"Random Number between %f and %f: %f", a, b, randomNumber1);
    }
    [pool drain];
    return 0;
}

Download the Example Project

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