Re: Should Emacs provide a uuid function?

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org>]

Ken Raeburn writes:
 > On Apr 25, 2011, at 00:37, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
 > > I have to agree with Yidong; there's no good reason not to inline
 > > 
 > >    (shell-command-to-string "uuidgen")
 > > 
 > > in any of the applications you've mentioned if you want an
 > > uuidgen-format UUID.
 > 
 > How widespread is the uuidgen program these days?

Don't know.  The only system I'd worry about is Windows, though.

I wonder if the POP (mail protocol) standard says anything about
this.  ISTR that some kind of unique identifier is part of it.  If so,
I'd imagine something equivalent to uuidgen is available at a hard
drive near you.

 > Though, at least one version I ran across generates (by default?) 
 > the information-revealing "version 1" format that encodes the
 > machine's MAC address, and while some versions have options to
 > control which form is generated, not all do.

Application where you'd care, please.  If any of the data for the
applications mentioned by Leo leaked enough that somebody got hold of
one of the UUIDs, I'd be worried about everything *except* my MAC
address.

 > Using the version-4 random-number-based form described in
 > wikipedia, it would probably be faster

"Speed kills."<wink>  Or should I haul out the old Don Knuth chestnut?

Again, what applications of UUIDs are you thinking of where you'd care?

If somebody wants to put a uuidgen.el into ELPA, that would probably
be cool though.