The *.c files in this directory were created by the program f2c, which translates Fortran code to C code. The primary purpose of this set of files is to provide means to create six executable files: diehard, makewhat, diequick, getrnor, asc2bin, meld, asc2bin from the six C files diehard.c, makewhat.c, diequick.c, getrnor.c, meld.c, asc2bin.c thus getting the full DIEHARD battery of tests. Please note that the Fortran source files for DIEHARD are a mixture of patched and addended Fortran files going back over thirty years. They were gathered to provide the DIEHARD battery of tests and the makewhat exec file for generating various kinds of RNG's. The resulting mix seems to suit my purposes, but if you want to examine particular *.c files for details of testing or generating procedures, you may have difficulty. The f2c translation is meant for machines, not people, and even if relation to the original Fortran file were transparent, you might still have problems because the Fortran file may itself be a mix of earlier working versions, or because of steps necessary to overcome Fortran's quaint insistence on signed integers and the un-mathematical way it decides I < J? for 32-bit integers. Whatever, if you compile these *.c files you should get a working version of DIEHARD. Be sure to link with the f2c and math libraries. A typical command might go (for the gnu c compiler): gcc -o diehard diehard.c -lf2c -lm which would produce the executable file that does the DIEHARD battery of tests. Similar commands would create the other exec files---`makewhat' for creating test files, `asc2bin' for changing an ascii (hex) file of integers to the binary form required by `diehard', `meld' for merging two binary files of random bits, `getrnor' for creating a file of standard normal variables. And `diequick' for a terse version of `diehard'. These exec files need to read from three text or data files tests.txt makef.txt operm5d.ata that must be available to them. There is also a diehard.doc file in this package, as well as three postscript files that give theory and descriptions of tests and random number generators. There is a fourth postcript file, cdmake.ps, that describes the CDROM I will be distributing soon. George Marsaglia geo@stat.fsu.edu