Order By Rand(n)

[dprevite]

Does ORDER BY RAND(N) work on all versions of MySQL? I'm running the exact same query on MySQL 4.0.13 and MySQL 3.23.58 and it only works on 4.0.13. I'm trying:

SELECT * FROM members WHERE status='active' ORDER BY RAND(12)

The 12 is a random number generated by php, it is different every time someone logs in.

The manual doesn't say anything:

RAND(N)
Returns a random floating-point value in the range from 0 to 1.0. If an integer argument N is specified, it is used as the seed value (producing a repeatable sequence).
mysql> SELECT RAND();
-> 0.9233482386203
mysql> SELECT RAND(20);
-> 0.15888261251047
mysql> SELECT RAND(20);
-> 0.15888261251047
mysql> SELECT RAND();
-> 0.63553050033332
mysql> SELECT RAND();
-> 0.70100469486881

[LordShryku]

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/Upgrading-from-3.23.html

[dprevite]

it says:

RAND(seed) returns a different random number series in 4.0 than in 3.23; this was done to further differentiate RAND(seed) and RAND(seed+1).

Which is true, if I do SELECT RAND(12) it will always give me the same number (different between versions, but doens't matter), but ORDER BY RAND(12) doesn't seem to work on the older version.