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Example comment ID: .

Why are the hexadecimal digits grouped in this particular way?

And do each digit groups have special meanings?


I know, it is trivial for an average end user, but it still made me curious.

Example comment ID: [`35b44caa-c16a-4411-8d26-2cf07610aeab`](/c/35b44caa-c16a-4411-8d26-2cf07610aeab) . Why are the hexadecimal digits grouped in this particular way? And do each digit groups have special meanings? ---- I know, it is trivial for an average end user, but it still made me curious.

(post is archived)

[–] 1 pt

Comment ID hashes are randomly generated with the .

[–] 1 pt

Interesting, thanks.

[–] 1 pt

The advantage of that design is you have a very little* chance of collision.

little: UUIDs have 122 bits of entropy so the chance of two random UUIDs colliding is about 10-37. If you generate 246 UUIDs (approximately 1 petabyte of entropy) the chance of getting a collision is 1 in 50 billion.

[–] 0 pt

I see.

Voat apparently does it with normal (sequential) upcounting (like Poal's post counts).