.\" Copyright 1999 Andreas Dilger (adilger@enel.ucalgary.ca)
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.\" Created  Wed Mar 10 17:42:12 1999, Andreas Dilger
.TH UUID 3 "May 2009" "util-linux" "Libuuid API"
.SH NAME
uuid \- DCE compatible Universally Unique Identifier library
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B #include <uuid.h>
.SH DESCRIPTION
The UUID library is used to generate unique identifiers for objects
that may be accessible beyond the local system.  This library
generates UUIDs compatible with those created by the Open Software
Foundation (OSF) Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) utility
.BR uuidgen .
.sp
The UUIDs generated by this library can be reasonably expected to be
unique within a system, and unique across all systems.  They could
be used, for instance, to generate unique HTTP cookies across multiple
web servers without communication between the servers, and without fear
of a name clash.
.SH "CONFORMING TO"
This library generates UUIDs compatible OSF DCE 1.1, and hash based UUIDs V3 and
V5 compatible with RFC-4122.
.SH AUTHOR
Theodore Y.\& Ts'o
.SH AVAILABILITY
.B libuuid
is part of the util-linux package since version 2.15.1 and is available from
https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR uuid_clear (3),
.BR uuid_compare (3),
.BR uuid_copy (3),
.BR uuid_generate (3),
.BR uuid_is_null (3),
.BR uuid_parse (3),
.BR uuid_time (3),
.BR uuid_unparse (3)