UUID
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Revision as of 02:01, 15 August 2014
A UUID (universally unique identifier) is an arbitrary 128-bit identifier, and a standard set of guidelines for generating such an identifier. The goal is that each identifer will (with overwhelming probability) be unique, without need of a central authority.
Some of the bits in a UUID are obviously not random. They are used to indicate the UUID version number, etc.
The standard way to display a UUID is to use hex encoding, with four hyphens added at particular positions. It typically looks something like this:
00000000-1111-2222-3333-444444444444
The Microsoft version of UUID is known as GUID. [TODO: Explain the difference between UUID and GUID. Supposedly there is a difference in endianness, but what exactly does that mean?]
