Is a GUID unique 100% of the time?

Question

Is a GUID unique 100% of the time?

Will it stay unique over multiple threads?

Answer 1

If you are scared of the same GUID values then put two of them next to each other.

Guid.NewGuid().ToString() + Guid.NewGuid().ToString();

If you are too paranoid then put three.

Answer 2

Theoretically, no, they are not unique. It's possible to generate an identical guid over and over. However, the chances of it happening are so low that you can assume they are unique.

I've read before that the chances are so low that you really should stress about something else--like your server spontaneously combusting or other bugs in your code. That is, assume it's unique and don't build in any code to "catch" duplicates--spend your time on something more likely to happen (i.e. anything else).

I made an attempt to describe the usefulness of GUIDs to my blog audience (non-technical family memebers). From there (via Wikipedia), the odds of generating a duplicate GUID:

• 1 in 2^128
• 1 in 340 undecillion (don’t worry, undecillion is not on the quiz)
• 1 in 3.4 × 10^38
• 1 in 340,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Answer 3

MSDN:

There is a very low probability that the value of the new Guid is all zeroes or equal to any other Guid.

Answer 4

Yes, a GUID should always be unique. It is based on both hardware and time, plus a few extra bits to make sure it's unique. I'm sure it's theoretically possible to end up with two identical ones, but extremely unlikely in a real-world scenario.

Here's a great article by Raymond Chen on Guids:

https://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2008/06/27/8659071.aspx ​ ​ ​

Answer 5

While each generated GUID is not guaranteed to be unique, the total number of unique keys (2¹²⁸ or 3.4×10³⁸) is so large that the probability of the same number being generated twice is very small. For example, consider the observable universe, which contains about 5×10²² stars; every star could then have 6.8×10¹⁵ universally unique GUIDs.

From Wikipedia.

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These are some good articles on how a GUID is made (for .NET) and how you could get the same guid in the right situation.

https://ericlippert.com/2012/04/24/guid-guide-part-one/

https://ericlippert.com/2012/04/30/guid-guide-part-two/

https://ericlippert.com/2012/05/07/guid-guide-part-three/

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Answer 6

From http://www.guidgenerator.com/online-guid-generator.aspx

What is a GUID?

GUID (or UUID) is an acronym for 'Globally Unique Identifier' (or 'Universally Unique Identifier'). It is a 128-bit integer number used to identify resources. The term GUID is generally used by developers working with Microsoft technologies, while UUID is used everywhere else.

How unique is a GUID?

128-bits is big enough and the generation algorithm is unique enough that if 1,000,000,000 GUIDs per second were generated for 1 year the probability of a duplicate would be only 50%. Or if every human on Earth generated 600,000,000 GUIDs there would only be a 50% probability of a duplicate.