[plt-scheme] UUID Question

I would say that the right thing is an optional (or keyword) argument
that defaults to the value of a parameter, so the default can easily
be changed for a range of code.

Robby

On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 9:46 PM, Doug Williams
<m.douglas.williams at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've implemented RFC 4122 Universally Unique Identifiers (UUIDs) and have an
> interesting dilemma. Two of the types of UUIDs are generated based on a
> namespace UUID and name using either MD5 (a type 3 UUID) or SLA-1 (a type 5
> UUID) hashes. I implemented the type 3 and type 5 UUIDs in accordance with
> RFC 4122 - in particular, my result for the type 3 example in the RFC
> matches the result I get; there is no type 5 example. Then I checked it
> against the Python implementation and got a different answer. After a bit of
> a search I found a post by the original author of the Python code that said
> he felt the RFC implementation was in error. Anyway, the Unix uuid command
> matches the Python answer, but I have found others (e.g., Apache and PHP
> that match (or did match) the RFC). For the curious, the difference has to
> do with byte-swapping to/from network order.
>
> I've implemented type 3 and type 5 UUIDs both ways and have separate calls -
> for example, make-uuid-3 and make-uuid-3*. For now, I have make-uuid-3
> matching the Unix uuid command and make-uuid-3* matching the RFC. The same
> goes for type 5 UUIDs.
>
> The first question is whether there are any web gurus on the mailing list
> that might know which really is the correct/preferred implementation. I
> haven't found any addenda or anything for RFC 4122 that suggests that the
> IETF considers the RFC to be in error. On the other hand, the Unix and
> Python implementations are widely used.
>
> The second question is whether to two functions as described above or a
> single function with an optional argument to specify which of the two
> alternatives to use. My initial decision is to use two functions as above,
> where the Unix uuid values are the unstarred version. So, make-uuid-3
> returns the same value as the Unix 'uuid -v3' command and make-uuid-3*
> returns the same value as the RFC reference implementation. [My assumption
> being that the Unix uuid version is the more wide used, but I may be totally
> wrong.]
>
> I do feel I should provide both, since both seem to exist 'in the wild' and
> the purpose of type 3 and 5 UUIDs is to be repeatable.
>
> For those interested, the package also produces type 1 (time-based) and type
> 4 (random) UUIDs.
>
> Doug
>
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