Cool ways to generate a UUID

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OK, may be not cool enough for Linux veterans, but cool enough for me!

There are two ways, in the order of coolness:

  1. On Linux only: cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/uuid

    $ cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/uuid
    fa199476-f6f3-4a32-ab89-91d81d9cc319
  2. On Linux and macOS: uuidgen

    $ uuidgen
    6180fa98-ddd7-4777-a40d-b548db1f3444

    On macOS, uuidgen gives a UUID in uppercase. You can pipe it to tr command to translate it to lowercase.

    # On macOS
    $ uuidgen
    58D8D68C-B64D-4E1E-AC0F-B00AFAC1E895
    
    $ uuidgen | tr "[:upper:]" "[:lower:]"
    919ae848-df9c-41fa-b59f-de4b933c927c

Post author's photo Written by Jayesh Bhoot