How can I make short random unique keys, like YouTube video IDs, in PHP? [closed]

Answer 1

I was looking for a very quick and simple solution (that was NOT intended to be secure in any way) that would replicate the actual hash code upon regeneration (unlike PHP's microtime unique id). This one did the trick.

http://php.net/manual/en/book.hash.php

So:

for($i=0;$i

Yields:

#179507fa
#8e9c5640
#f99b66d6
#67fff375
#10f8c3e3

etc

I won't pretend to know how all the different hash algorithms are used but for non-secure uses (like link #anchors) this is handy.