What is the best way to generate a unique and short file name in Java

Question

I don\'t necessarily want to use UUIDs since they are fairly long.

The file just needs to be unique within its directory.

One thought which comes to mind is

Answer 1

It looks like you've got a handful of solutions for creating a unique filename, so I'll leave that alone. I would test the filename this way:

    String filePath;
    boolean fileNotFound = true;
    while (fileNotFound) {
        String testPath = generateFilename();

        try {
            RandomAccessFile f = new RandomAccessFile(
                new File(testPath), "r");
        } catch (Exception e) {
            // exception thrown by RandomAccessFile if 
            // testPath doesn't exist (ie: it can't be read)

            filePath = testPath;
            fileNotFound = false;
        }
    }
    //now create your file with filePath