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
:
- -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
SEE ALSO
uuidgen(2),
uuid(3)
HISTORY
The
uuidgen
command first appeared in
NetBSD3.0.