String-Random-NiceURL - v0.01 ============================= Random ID strings suitable for URLs. This module allows you to create sparse and distributed IDs such as those used for YouTube videos. It uses a modified base 64 character set but also makes sure that the first and last chars of your ID are not the dash or underscore characters (this helps some programs detect the URLs correctly). Any length IDs (greater than two chars) can be created and could be used for blog posts, short URLs, images or videos. EXAMPLE ======= id(2) => 6p id(6) => NIK_qV id(11) => 2qUROkj-1X6 ...etc... For each length (len), the number of combinations is 62^2 * 64^(len-2): * length 2 => 3844 * length 3 => 246016 * length 4 => 15745024 (over 15 million combinations already) * length 5 => 1.008e+09 * length 6 => 6.449e+10 * length 7 => 4.127e+12 * length 8 => 2.642e+14 * length 9 => 1.691e+16 (lots and lots) Out of interest, YouTube use 11 chars (but also the first and last letters can include dashes or underscores), so their total number of combinations is 64^11, which is 7.379e+19. (For comparison, this module would produce 6.925e+19 combinations at 11 chars, so not much less but much nicer due to the constrained first and last chars). INSTALLATION ============ To install this module, run the following commands: perl Makefile.PL make make test make install SUPPORT AND DOCUMENTATION ========================= After installing, you can find documentation for this module with the perldoc command. perldoc String::Random::NiceURL You can also look for information at: RT, CPAN's request tracker http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/Bugs.html?Dist=String-Random-NiceURL AnnoCPAN, Annotated CPAN documentation http://annocpan.org/dist/String-Random-NiceURL CPAN Ratings http://cpanratings.perl.org/d/String-Random-NiceURL Search CPAN http://search.cpan.org/dist/String-Random-NiceURL AUTHOR, COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE ============================= Written by Andrew Chilton, Copyright (c) 2010, Apps Attic Ltd, all rights reserved. http://www.appsattic.com/ This module is free software. You can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the Artistic License 2.0. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. A copy of this license is supplied with the distribution as the file COPYING.