Unique S/N Generator?

[devicerandom]

On 07/02/11 17:01, Amichai Rotman wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I would like to hand out some Coupons to my customers granting the 2-3
> hours free phone support as part of a marketing campaign.
>
> I am looking for a way to generate a unique S/N number / code
> (preferably letters and numbers) for them to read back to me over the
> phone, so I can verify it's authenticity and provide them the service.
>
> Is there a tool out there I can use?

With a bit of Python you can go anywhere. This code *should* generate 
10000 unique alphanumeric codes and save them to a text file (I haven't 
tested it).


#!/usr/bin/env python

import random
a='1234567890abcdefghi' #we return permutations of this string

a = list(a)

codes=[]

for i in range(10000): #we generate 10000 codes
     code = ''.join(random.shuffle(a)))
     if not (code in codes): #avoid duplicates -very improbable but cheap
        codes.append(code)

f = open('codes.txt','w')
f.write('\n'.join(codes))
f.close()


> I'd like to set different ranges of codes for different target audiences.

This is easy -just include a unique character for each target audience 
in the initial string.

http://docs.python.org/library/random.html can help.

cheers,
m.

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