[m-dev.] proposal: add uuid module to the standard library

[Peter Wang]

On Sat, 31 Oct 2020 17:22:09 +1100 "Zoltan Somogyi" <zoltan.somogyi at runbox.com> wrote:
> 
> 2020-10-31 17:18 GMT+11:00 "Peter Wang" <novalazy at gmail.com>:
> > We do have a uuid module in Prince but all it does is generate random
> > UUIDs by reading from a cryptographic RNG (which is platform specific)
> > and knocking out the relevant bits, and converting the uuid to a string
> > or byte array representation.
> 
> Julien's module does that too.

(The glue code to read from a cryptographic RNG needs to be supplied.)

> 
> > I'm not sure why anyone ever needs to
> > inspect the internal structure of a UUID.
> 
> I don't either. But if the structure is published, then I see no point
> in hiding it either.

If no functions were provided to inspect the internal structure then a
simpler representation could be used, e.g.

    :- type uuid
	--->	uuid(string).

where the string is in a canonical format. This would remove quite a lot
of code. But perhaps there is some reason to maintain a specific
ordering of UUIDs.

Peter