Recently I had some difficulties to generate pseudo-random numbers in C by using Lehmer’s method. Lehmer random number generator is an easy-to-implement algorithm that provides random number stream. Basically you have a multiplier (a) and modulus (m) which you use in a basic arithmetic to get next number. Let we have the initial seed  $$s$$, than the following numbers can be obtained as

$$s = ( sa ) \pmod{m}$$

and if you want to get uniform numbers between zero and one, then you can divide  $$s$$  to  $$m$$. The major problem is, when  $$m$$  is a big number (like  $$2^{31} -1$$) then you may get some very big numbers for  $$s$$. Later when I need to multiply big numbers, like  $$s=65467721$$, multiplying this number with my multiplier  $$a=48271$$  was leading to overflow. Let’s try the following code:

The output is

As you see our multiplication leaded overflow thus returned a negative number, which has no value. A quick fix to this problem is adding “unsigned long long” in front of  $$s$$. Consider the following code:

which gives

It was actually a bug in the latest project I’m coding. After driving me nuts for 2 weeks, I finally get rid of the problem once and for all.