xref: /netbsd-src/usr.bin/uuidgen/uuidgen.1 (revision f70e00b3b68769559788ace97383377e1ab1d760)

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.\" Copyright (c) 2002 Marcel Moolenaar
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.\" $FreeBSD: src/usr.bin/uuidgen/uuidgen.1,v 1.5 2003/05/22 13:10:32 ru Exp $
.\"
.Dd September 13, 2004
.Dt UUIDGEN 1
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm uuidgen
.Nd generate universally unique identifiers
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm
.Op Fl 1s
.Op Fl n Ar count
.Op Fl o Ar filename
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm
utility by default generates a single universally unique identifier (UUID),
also known as a globally unique identifier (GUID).
By default,
.Nm
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
.Nm :
.Bl -tag -offset indent -width XoXfilenameXX
.It Fl 1
This option only has effect if multiple identifiers are to be generated and
instructs
.Nm
to not generate them in batch, but one at a time.
.It Fl n Ar count
This option controls the number of identifiers generated.
By default, multiple identifiers are generated in batch.
.It Fl o Ar filename
Redirect output to
.Ar filename
instead of stdout.
.It Fl s
Output UUIDs as initialized C structures, rather than in the standard
string format.
.El
.Pp
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.
.Pp
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.
.Sh DIAGNOSTICS
.Ex -std
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr uuidgen 2 ,
.Xr uuid 3
.Sh HISTORY
The
.Nm
command first appeared in
.Nx 3.0 .