uuid(1) Universally Unique Identifier Command-Line Tool

VERSION

OSSP uuid 1.6.2 (04-Jul-2008)

SYNOPSIS

uuid [-v version] [-m] [-n count] [-1] [-F format] [-o filename] [namespace name]

uuid -d [-r] [-o filename] uuid

DESCRIPTION

OSSP uuid is a ISO-C:1999 application programming interface (API) and corresponding command line interface (CLI) for the generation of DCE 1.1, ISO/IEC 11578:1996 and IETF RFC-4122 compliant Universally Unique Identifier (UUID). It supports DCE 1.1 variant UUIDs of version 1 (time and node based), version 3 (name based, MD5), version 4 (random number based) and version 5 (name based, SHA-1). Additional API bindings are provided for the languages ISO-C++:1998, Perl:5 and PHP:4/5. Optional backward compatibility exists for the ISO-C DCE-1.1 and Perl Data::UUID APIs.

UUIDs are 128 bit numbers which are intended to have a high likelihood of uniqueness over space and time and are computationally difficult to guess. They are globally unique identifiers which can be locally generated without contacting a global registration authority. UUIDs are intended as unique identifiers for both mass tagging objects with an extremely short lifetime and to reliably identifying very persistent objects across a network.

This is the command line interface (CLI) of OSSP uuid. For a detailed description of UUIDs see the documentation of the application programming interface (API) in uuid(3).

OPTIONS

-v version
Sets the version of the generated DCE 1.1 variant UUID. Supported are version "1``, ''3``, ''4`` and ''5``. The default is ''1".

For version 3 and version 5 UUIDs the additional command line arguments namespace and name have to be given. The namespace is either a UUID in string representation or an identifier for internally pre-defined namespace UUIDs (currently known are " ns:DNS
``, '' ns:URL
``, '' ns:OID
``, and '' ns:X500
"). The name is a string of arbitrary length.

-m
Forces the use of a random multi-cast MAC address when generating version 1 UUIDs. By default the real physical MAC address of the system is used.
-n count
Generate count UUIDs instead of just a single one (the default).
-1
If option -n is used with a count greater than 1, then this option can enforce the reset the UUID context for each generated UUID. This makes no difference for version 3, 4 and 5 UUIDs. But version 1 UUIDs are based on the previously generated UUID which is remembered in the UUID context of the API. Option -1 deletes the remembered UUID on each iteration.
-F format
Representation format for importing or exporting an UUID. The following (case insensitive) format identifiers are currently recognized:
BIN
(binary representation)
This is the raw 128 bit network byte order binary representation of a UUID. Example is the octet stream 0xF8 0x1D 0x4F 0xAE 0x7D 0xEC 0x11 0xD0 0xA7 0x65 0x00 0xA0 0xC9 0x1E 0x6B 0xF6
.
STR
(string representation)
This is the 36 character hexadecimal ASCII string representation of a UUID. Example is the string " f81d4fae-7dec-11d0-a765-00a0c91e6bf6
".
SIV
(single integer value representation)
This is the maximum 39 character long single integer value representation of a UUID. Example is the string "329800735698586629295641978511506172918".
-o filename
Write output to filename instead of to stdout.
-d
Decode a given UUID (given as a command line argument or if the command line argument is " -
" the UUID is read from stdin) and dump textual information about the UUID.

EXAMPLES

 # generate DCE 1.1 v1 UUID (time and node based)
 $ uuid -v1
 01c47915-4777-11d8-bc70-0090272ff725
 # decode and dump DCE 1.1 v1 UUID (time and node based)
 $ uuid -d 01c47915-4777-11d8-bc70-0090272ff725
 encode: STR:     01c47915-4777-11d8-bc70-0090272ff725
         SIV:     2349374037528578887923094374772111141
 decode: variant: DCE 1.1, ISO/IEC 11578:1996
         version: 1 (time and node based)
         content: time:  2004-01-15 16:22:26.376322.1 UTC
                  clock: 15472 (usually random)
                  node:  00:90:27:2f:f7:25 (global unicast)
 # generate DCE 1.1 v3 UUID (name based)
 $ uuid -v3 ns:URL http://www.ossp.org/
 02d9e6d5-9467-382e-8f9b-9300a64ac3cd
 # decode and dump DCE 1.1 v3 UUID (name based)
 $ uuid -d 02d9e6d5-9467-382e-8f9b-9300a64ac3cd
 encode: STR:     02d9e6d5-9467-382e-8f9b-9300a64ac3cd
         SIV:     3789866285607910888100818383505376205
 decode: variant: DCE 1.1, ISO/IEC 11578:1996
         version: 3 (name based, MD5)
         content: 02:D9:E6:D5:94:67:08:2E:0F:9B:93:00:A6:4A:C3:CD
                  (not decipherable: MD5 message digest only)
 # generate DCE 1.1 v4 UUID 4 (random data based)
 $ uuid -v4
 eb424026-6f54-4ef8-a4d0-bb658a1fc6cf
 # decode and dump DCE 1.1 v4 UUID 4 (random data based)
 $ uuid -d eb424026-6f54-4ef8-a4d0-bb658a1fc6cf
 encode: STR:     eb424026-6f54-4ef8-a4d0-bb658a1fc6cf
         SIV:     312712571721458096795100956955942831823
 decode: variant: DCE 1.1, ISO/IEC 11578:1996
         version: 4 (random data based)
         content: EB:42:40:26:6F:54:0E:F8:24:D0:BB:65:8A:1F:C6:CF
                  (no semantics: random data only)

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