CODEWITHSUNDEEP
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rtheunissen
rtheunissen

Reputation: 7435

Why are string identifiers often a set length?

For example: http://youtu.be/naHkZpMkPA0

You can look at websites likes imgur and youtube and popular link shorteners. My question is: let's assume it's the first ever submission, why would the id not follow an incremental pattern like a, b, c ... ab, ac ... bda, bdb etc. I can't think of a security risk as you can manipulate the id anyway.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 25

Answers (1)

NPE
NPE

Reputation: 500673

Firstly, in the examples you give the ids are not unique to the user but are global. Therefore I don't see how you can expect your submissions to have sequential ids.

Secondly, whoever designed the id scheme could well have had security considerations in mind. To this end, they could well have thought it beneficial to make the ids hard to guess.

Upvotes: 2

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