Compact representation of GUID/UUID?

Posted by chakrit on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by chakrit
Published on 2010-05-24T19:30:16Z Indexed on 2010/05/24 19:41 UTC
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I need to generate a GUID and save it via a string representation. The string representation should be as short as possible as it will be used as part of an already-long URL string.

Right now, instead of using the normal abcd-efgh-... representation, I use the raw bytes generated and base64-encode them instead, which results in a somewhat shorter string.

But is it possible to make it even shorter?

I'm OK with losing some degree of uniqueness and keeping a counter, but scanning all existing keys is not an option. Suggestions?

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