NAME    [Toc]    [Back]

     uuidgen -- generate universally unique identifiers

SYNOPSIS    [Toc]    [Back]

     uuidgen [-1] [-n count] [-o filename]

DESCRIPTION    [Toc]    [Back]

     The uuidgen utility by default generates a single universally unique
     identifier (UUID), also known as a globally unique identifier (GUID).
     The UUID is written to stdout by default.	The following options can be
     used to change the behaviour 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      This option controls the number of identifiers generated.	By
	     default, multiple identifiers are generated in batch.

     -o      Redirect output to filename instead of stdout.

     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    [Toc]    [Back]

     The uuidgen utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

SEE ALSO    [Toc]    [Back]

     uuidgen(2), uuid(3)

HISTORY    [Toc]    [Back]

     The uuidgen command first appeared in FreeBSD 5.0.


FreeBSD 5.2.1			 May 23, 2002			 FreeBSD 5.2.1