NAME
uuidgen —
generate universally unique
identifiers
SYNOPSIS
uuidgen |
[-1s]
[-n count]
[-o
filename] |
DESCRIPTION
The
uuidgen utility by default generates a single universally
unique identifier (UUID), also known as a globally unique identifier (GUID).
By default,
uuidgen generates a single UUID and outputs it
in the standard string representation to stdout. The following options can be
used to change the behavior of
uuidgen:
-
-
- -1
- This option only has effect if multiple identifiers are to
be generated and instructs uuidgen to not generate them
in batch, but one at a time.
-
-
- -n
count
- This option controls the number of identifiers generated.
By default, multiple identifiers are generated in batch.
-
-
- -o
filename
- Redirect output to filename instead
of stdout.
-
-
- -s
- Output UUIDs as initialized C structures, rather than in
the standard string format.
Batched generation yields a dense set of identifiers in such a way that there is
no identifier that is larger than the smallest identifier in the set and
smaller than the largest identifier in the set and that is not already in the
set.
When generating the identifiers one at a time, the identifiers will be close to
each other, but operating system latency and processing time will be reflected
in the distance between two successive identifiers.
DIAGNOSTICS
The
uuidgen utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if
an error occurs.
SEE ALSO
uuidgen(2),
uuid(3)
HISTORY
The
uuidgen command first appeared in
NetBSD
3.0.