[Freeciv-Dev] Re: [PATCH] more small directional cleanups

[Trent Piepho <xyzzy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 22 Aug 2001, Ross W. Wetmore wrote:
> 
> But his code is about 2-3 times more expensive for the standard case and

How so?  I think the generation of the random number is the most expensive
part, and I only do that once for the common case.

> I think that the problem of calling rand_neighbour() to generate a random
> adjacent tile when there are no adjacent tiles is a programming error that

It's not so much calling it when there're are no possibilities, but that you
depend on randomly finding one of the valid neighbors.  You could guess a
random number 1000 times and still not find it.  It seems bad to me
to depend on "luck" to keep your code from locking up.