CODEWITHSUNDEEP
gouuidguid
Sushwanth
Sushwanth

Reputation: 625

How to generate a UUID in a specific pattern

I am trying to generate a UUID in Go in a specific pattern. The program that I am working on requires various uuids to be generated similar to an existing uuid string. So the program would read an existing uuid (whose format can change in the future) and generate a new uuid in the same format to replace the existing one.

I have used the "github.com/satori/go.uuid" package to generate an uuid. The sample code that I am using is below which I found online.

As multiple instances of this programs would be deployed in parallel, I would like to avoid collisions or duplication in the uuids generated. 

    package main

import (
"fmt"
"github.com/satori/go.uuid"
)

func main() {
    // Creating UUID Version 4
    // panic on error
    u1 := uuid.Must(uuid.NewV4(), nil)
    fmt.Printf("UUIDv4: %s\n", u1)

    // or error handling
    u2:= uuid.NewV4()

    fmt.Printf("UUIDv4: %s\n", u2)

    /* Formats needed: 
    2286664c688130096c9ce9008e4d97fb
    6abb173a-b134-49f2-aa88-9dff5dab12a1 (This is obtained from the above code)
    C8-3C-9C-64-61-70-62-B9-34-AC-9A-20-C9-EF-1D-6D
    */
}

Upvotes: 2

Views: 3614

Answers (1)

Adrian
Adrian

Reputation: 46432

UUIDs are 128 bits; that's a space large enough that collisions are staggeringly unlikely.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universally_unique_identifier:

When generated according to the standard methods, UUIDs are for practical purposes unique, without depending for their uniqueness on a central registration authority or coordination between the parties generating them, unlike most other numbering schemes. While the probability that a UUID will be duplicated is not zero, it is close enough to zero to be negligible.

Thus, anyone can create a UUID and use it to identify something with near certainty that the identifier does not duplicate one that has already been, or will be, created to identify something else. Information labeled with UUIDs by independent parties can therefore be later combined into a single database or transmitted on the same channel, with a negligible probability of duplication.

The whole point of UUIDs, the reason they are so large, is to avoid collisions without synchronization. Per the same article, in order to reach a 50% chance of a collision would require:

generating 1 billion UUIDs per second for about 85 years, and a file containing this many UUIDs, at 16 bytes per UUID, would be about 45 exabytes, many times larger than the largest databases currently in existence, which are on the order of hundreds of petabytes.

Upvotes: 4

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