How to generate shorter UUIDs of 8 characters in length instead of 32 characters?

Question

UUID libraries generate 32-character UUIDs. How do I generate 8-character only UUIDs?

Answer 1

It is not possible since a UUID is a 16-byte number per definition. But of course, you can generate 8-character long unique strings (see the other answers).

Also be careful with generating longer UUIDs and substring-ing them, since some parts of the ID may contain fixed bytes (e.g. this is the case with MAC, DCE and MD5 UUIDs).