> > Also, a GUID is guaranteed (in theory, at least) to be unique. According > > to Microsoft, it stands for "globally unique identifier", and > "Guidgen.exe" > > (their GUID generator) "never produces the same number twice, no matter > how > > many times it is run or how many different machines it runs on". > >Do you have a reference to this? > >I'm curious how they can claim uniqueness without any coordination >unless it involves some attribute unique to the machine its running on.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/automat/htm_hh2/chap8_025b.asp mentions it. You can do a search for GUID and "Open Software Foundation" (the group that apparently developed the GUID) for more information. The GUID takes a number of pieces of information into account to make sure that locally created GUIDs are unique (such as the current time and a counter), and the network card's ID (if none exist, a special ID is created and stored persistently). -Scott --- Declude: Anti-virus, Anti-spam and Anti-hijacking solutions for IMail. http://www.declude.com --- [This E-mail was scanned for viruses by Declude Virus (http://www.declude.com)] Please visit http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html to be removed from this list. An Archive of this list is available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/ Please visit the Knowledge Base for answers to frequently asked questions: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/
