Short unique id in php

Question

I want to create a unique id but uniqid() is giving something like \'492607b0ee414\'. What i would like is something similar to what tinyurl gives:

Answer 1

@gen_uuid() by gord.

preg_replace got some nasty utf-8 problems, which causes the uid somtimes to contain "+" or "/". To get around this, you have to explicitly make the pattern utf-8

function gen_uuid($len=8) {

    $hex = md5("yourSaltHere" . uniqid("", true));

    $pack = pack('H*', $hex);
    $tmp =  base64_encode($pack);

    $uid = preg_replace("#(*UTF8)[^A-Za-z0-9]#", "", $tmp);

    $len = max(4, min(128, $len));

    while (strlen($uid) < $len)
        $uid .= gen_uuid(22);

    return substr($uid, 0, $len);
}

Took me quite a while to find that, perhaps it's saves somebody else a headache