ben morrow xupmorrowmeuk quoth qtog3epoawmhperlorg perldoc f srand consequently perlfuncpod contains following note need something much random default seed cryptographic purposes checksumming compressed output one rapidly changing operating system status programs usual method example srand time unpack l ps axww gzip problem ps axww gzip returns output every time least system bentyr ps axwwgzip gzip compressed data written terminal use f force compression help type gzip h case gzips stdout terminal says gzip writing pipe srand docs perfectly happy least system ps axww gzip cat gzip output ben tue 05 aug 2008 150537 0100 perl 46019 documentation srand problem code snippet