UUIDGEN(1) BSD General Commands Manual UUIDGEN(1)NAME
uuidgen — generate universally unique identifiers
SYNOPSIS
uuidgen [-1s] [-n count] [-o filename]
DESCRIPTION
The uuidgen utility by default generates a single universally unique
identifier (UUID), also known as a globally unique identifier (GUID). By
default, uuidgen generates a single UUID and outputs it in the standard
string representation to stdout. The following options can be used to
change the behavior 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 count This option controls the number of identifiers gen‐
erated. By default, multiple identifiers are gener‐
ated in batch.
-o filename Redirect output to filename instead of stdout.
-s Output UUIDs as initialized C structures, rather
than in the standard string format.
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
The uuidgen utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.
SEE ALSOuuidgen(2), uuid(3)HISTORY
The uuidgen command first appeared in NetBSD 3.0.
BSD September 13, 2004 BSD