Will Maier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Fri, Sep 07, 2007 at 12:03:23PM -0000, Steven D'Aprano wrote: > [...] > > which is easy enough, but I thought I'd check if there was an > > existing solution in the standard library that I missed. Also, for > > other applications, I might want them to be rather less > > predictable. > > 2.5 includes the uuid module for RFC 4122 universally-unique IDs: > > http://docs.python.org/lib/module-uuid.html
I second this recommendation. If you want arbitrary unique IDs that are not a function of the data they identify, the simplest solution is a monotonically-increasing serial number. If you want more than that, you might as well go straight to the standard UUIDs. Even if you're not using Python 2.5, grab the external 'python-uuid' package for your operating system and use that. If you use the options for including random elements, the generated UUIDs will even satisfy your "unpredictable" requirement. -- \ "This sentence contradicts itself -- no actually it doesn't." | `\ -- Douglas Hofstadter | _o__) | Ben Finney -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
