344411: $RANDOM stays the same when job executed in the background In bash 3.0, random was seeded whenever subshell_environment != 0. In bash 3.2, random was seeded whenever subshell_environment != 0 && seeded_subshell == 0. And when it was seeded, seeded_subshell was set to 1. Therefore, in 3.2, if you seeded random in a subshell and in this subshell invoked another one, it wasn't reseeded as it should have been. A testcase for that is this: ( echo $RANDOM; ( echo $RANDOM ); ( echo $RANDOM ) ) Tomas's patch (bash-3.2-rng.patch) changed the code to use subshell_level. subshell_level is not increased for simple async commands, however. So, although he fixed the previous case, he introduced another. Here's a testcase: echo $RANDOM; echo $RANDOM & echo $RANDOM & I decided to just compare the pids, that should be safe enough. Written-by: Tomas Janousek Reviewed-by: Tomas Mraz --- bash-3.2/variables.c.344411 2007-11-06 19:26:42.000000000 +0100 +++ bash-3.2/variables.c 2007-11-06 20:27:25.000000000 +0100 @@ -1211,7 +1211,7 @@ arrayind_t unused; { sbrand ((unsigned int)strtoul (value, (char **)NULL, 10)); - seeded_subshell = subshell_level; + seeded_subshell = getpid(); return (self); } @@ -1221,10 +1221,10 @@ int rv; /* Reset for command and process substitution. */ - if (seeded_subshell < subshell_level) + if (seeded_subshell != getpid()) { seed_random (); - seeded_subshell = subshell_level; + seeded_subshell = getpid(); } do