In order to get random numbers for whatever purpose, C++ programmers usually basically used the rand() function of the C library before C++11. Since C++11, there has been a whole suite of random number generators that serve different purposes and have different characteristics.

These generators are not completely self-explanatory, so we will have a look at all of them in this recipe. In the end, we will see in what ways they differ, how to choose the right one, and that we will most probably never use all of them.