[erlang-questions] Generating readable unique IDs for use outside erlang

[Dave Challis]

Perfect, that looks like it does exactly as I need, thanks!

On 10/02/11 14:40, Max E. Kuznecov wrote:
> Looks like erlang:phash2/1 may help:
>
>> erlang:phash2({node(), now()}).
> 59735927
>
> 2011/2/10 Dave Challis<dsc@REDACTED>:
>> Is there a good (and fast) way of generating a unique id for use outside
>> Erlang?
>>
>> The best method I can find for generating a unique id is to use:
>> {node(), now()}
>>
>> Which generates something like:
>> {foo@REDACTED,{1297,347375,276224}}
>>
>> This works great, and is what I use within erlang.
>>
>> However, it looks a bit meaningless is likely to confuse users of the
>> non-erlang application that uses it - is there a nice way to turn that into
>> an integer, or series of integers instead?
>>
>> E.g. turning the above into:
>> 3473290872_1297_347375_276224
>> (or ideally a single integer)
>>
>> would be fine, but I'm not sure how to get an integer from a term.
>>
>> Chances are I'll be generating hundreds of thousands to several million of
>> these, so I'm also a bit concerned about efficiency - turning the {node(),
>> now()} tuple into a string would no doubt take up more memory (and some
>> processing time).
>>
>> Any suggestions on this?
>>
>> --
>> Dave Challis
>> dsc@REDACTED
>>
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>
>
>


-- 
Dave Challis
dsc@REDACTED