If your only purpose is to name the files, do you need a "globally" unique ID? Why not just use an increment, along with the author & first letter.
e.g.
> Aeschylus / Prometheus Bound => aeschylus_p01.txt
> Aeschylus / Suppliant Maidens => aeschylus_s01.txt
> American State / Articles of confederation => american_state_a01.txt
> ...
> Aristotle / On Generation And Corruption => aristotle_o01.txt
> Aristotle / On The Gait Of Animals => aristotle_o02.txt
> Aristotle / On The Generation Of Animals => aristotle_o03.txt
If you generate your integers in alphabetical order, they'll always be the same for each title and you'll never get filename collisions. Unless your list will grow - will it?
-Andrew
On 2010-05-28, at 9:34 AM, Eric Lease Morgan wrote:
> Given a list of unique strings, how can I generate a list of short, unique integers?
>
> I have a list of about 250 unique author/title combinations, such as:
>
> Aeschylus / Prometheus Bound
> Aeschylus / Suppliant Maidens
> American State / Articles of confederation
> American State / Declaration of Independence
> Aquinas / Summa Theologica
> Aristophanes / Achamians
> Aristophanes / Clouds
> Aristophanes / Ecclesiazusae
> Aristotle / On Generation And Corruption
> Aristotle / On The Gait Of Animals
> Aristotle / On The Generation Of Animals
> ...
>
> From each author/title combination I want to create a file name (key). Specifically, I want a file name with the following form: author-firstwordofthetitle-integer.txt Such a scheme will make it (relatively) easy for me to look at the file name and know the what title is and by whom.
>
> Using Perl, how can I convert the author/title combination into some sort of integer, checksum, or unique value that is the same every time I run my script? I don't want to have to remember what was used before because I don't want to maintain a list of previously used keys. Should I use some form of the pack function? Should I sum the ASCII values of each character in the author/title combination?
>
> --
> Eric Morgan
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