I recently tossed off a module to generate UUIDs
because i needed one.  Fredrik Lundh suggested i submit
it here for inclusion in the standard library.

See http://zesty.ca/python/uuid.html for a pydoc page.

The module provides a UUID class for representing UUIDs
and can generate version 1, 3, 4, or 5 UUIDs.

One drawback of the implementation is that it currently
runs external programs ("ipconfig" or "ifconfig") to
obtain the Ethernet hardware address used in a version
1 UUID.  The version 1 UUID implementation also does
not use persistent storage to determine the clock
sequence number.

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This update fixes __repr__ to return a proper expression
and adds the use of os.urandom (if available) to generate
randomness for version 4 UUIDs.

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This update fixes __repr__ to return a proper expression
and adds the use of os.urandom (if available) to generate
randomness for version 4 UUIDs.

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This update fixes __repr__ to return a proper expression
and adds the use of os.urandom (if available) to generate
randomness for version 4 UUIDs.

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This update fixes the order of the bytes in a hash-generated
UUID.  With this fix, the interpretation of RFC 4122 is that
"octet 0" refers to the MOST significant octet, i.e. the one
printed on the left.

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I'd like to see some constants pre-calculated for gaining
performance, e.g. during mass data handling. E.g. the MAC
address should only determined once after startup. Or at
least as key-word argument so that the caller can decide to
cache the MAC address.

def uuid1(node=None):
  [..]
  node = node or getaddr()

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We had some minor problems backporting this to Python 2.3;
this fixed it:

-        uuid = UUID(randrange(1<<32L), randrange(1<<16),
randrange(1<<16),
-                    randrange(1<<8), randrange(1<<8),
randrange(1<<48L))
+        uuid = UUID(randrange(1<<32), randrange(1<<16),
randrange(1<<16),
+                    randrange(1<<8), randrange(1<<8),
randrange(1<<48))

I'm not sure what the most current version looks like, so
this might not be a problem anymore (e.g. if the values get
precalculated)

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On c.l.py, Thomas Heller noted:

"""
I haven't used this module, but:

The wingetaddr() function doesn't work on a german version
of windows (there is no line in the output that starts with
'physical address').

In getaddr(), what if windows is installed on the D: drive?
"""

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One more thing about getaddr function.

On Win 2k, "C:\WINNT" is used instead of XP-
like "C:\windows".
(If I remember correctly, Win 2k is still supportted. Am I 
right?)

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Instead of hardcoding directories for ipconfig, why not try
spawnp directly on UNIX or use something like
webbrowser._iscommand?

Minor nit: a,b,c = [1,2,3] is better a,b,c=1,2,3

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> On Win 2k, "C:\WINNT" is used instead of XP-like 
> "C:\windows".

Perhaps uuid.py could use the "windir" environment variable.
It is defined on (at least) WinXP, Win2k, WinMe that I could
check and points to C:\WINDOWS (on WinXP and WinMe) and
C:\WINNT (on Win2k).

It would first be good to verify if it is defined on WinNT
and Win9x.

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> use something like webbrowser._iscommand

I have a Python implementation of `which`:
    http://trentm.com/projects/which/
    http://trentm.com/projects/which/which.py

though that is likely overkill for this case.

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Would require a C extension but perhaps this could be used
to get the MAC address on Windows instead of running and
grepping (unreliable for different locales as Thomas pointed
out) ipconfig.exe:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;118623
How To Get the MAC Address for an Ethernet Adapter

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This module was now added to the stdlib.