Generating 8-character only UUIDs

java uuid
M.J. picture M.J. · Nov 24, 2010 · Viewed 193k times · Source

UUID libraries generate 32-character UUIDs.

I want to generate 8-character only UUIDs, is it possible?

Answer

Cephalopod picture Cephalopod · Nov 24, 2010

It is not possible since a UUID is a 16-byte number per definition. But of course, you can generate 8-character long unique strings (see the other answers).

Also be careful with generating longer UUIDs and substring-ing them, since some parts of the ID may contain fixed bytes (e.g. this is the case with MAC, DCE and MD5 UUIDs).

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