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uuidgen(1)

Name

uuidgen-generate a Universal Unique Identifier (UUID)

Synopsis

uuidgen [-o filename] [{-i | -n number}] [-v] [-h] [-?]

Description

uuidgen, by default, generates a Universal Unique Identifier (UUID) on the standard output.The UUID is used to uniquely identifier an IDL interface definition. The format for a UUID string consists of eight hexadecimal digits followed by a dash, followed by three groups of four hexadecimal digits separated by dashes, followed by a dash and twelve hexadecimal digits (see the EXAMPLES below).

The following uuidgen(1) options are supported:

-i

Produces an IDL file template, including a UUID string (see EXAMPLES for the file format). This option cannot be specified with the -n option.

-n number

Generates the specified number of UUID strings. This option cannot be specified with the -i option.

-o filename

Redirects the output to the specified file.

-v

Displays the version number for uuidgen(1) but does not generate a UUID string.

-h or -?

Display help information for uuidgen(1).

Network Address

The generation of the UUID requires the availability of a 48-bit IEEE 802 address. Since this is not available in all environments and the method of determination is not portable, several methods are available for use with the BEA TUXEDO system version of uuidgen.

• If the NADDR environment variable is set to a value of the form

  num.num.num.num 

  it is taken to be a Internet-style address and converted.

• Otherwise, if the WSNADDR environment variable is set to a value of the form

  0xnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn 

  it is taken to be a hexadecimal network address, as used in Workstation.

• Otherwise, if not DOS, the uname for the machine is used to look up the machine entry in /etc/hosts to get the Internet-style address.

• Otherwise, a warning is printed and 00.00.00.00 is used.

Note that in each of these cases, a 32-bit address is formed and the remainder of the address (for 48-bits) is treated as 00.00.

Diagnostics

uuidgen will exit with a non-zero exit code if an invalid command-line option is specified, or if it cannot open the output file. A warning is printed if an invalid network address value is given and the value 00.00.00.00 is used.

Examples

Generate a UUID string:

uuidgen 
23C67E00-71B6-11C9-9DFC-08002B0ECEF1

Generate an IDL template for developing an interface definition:

uuidgen -i  
[uuid(B5F8DB80-3CCA-14F8-1E78-930269370000)]  
interface INTERFACE  
{  
}

Generate two UUID strings:

uuidgen -n 2  
C0B37080-3CCA-14F8-265F-930269370000
C0B37081-3CCA-14F8-2CDB-930269370000

See Also

tidl(1)

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