Generate GUID in Windows with batch file

Question

How can I generate a GUID in a batch file running using the commandline in Windows?

Valenciavalenciennes

There is no built-in command available that does that. Either write your own, or get an existing one. – Leonardo

BTW, MS-DOS has been dead for at least 10 years. The program that runs batch files is the command prompt. – Leadbelly

#570358 – Fusty

@Tim Robinson : Thanks for your input, looking forward for help on creating GUIDs. – Valenciavalenciennes

Answer 1

The Windows SDK comes with a tool called uuidgen (if you have Visual Studio, you'll have the Windows SDK, and you need to run the Visual Studio Command Prompt to set proper paths).

C:\>uuidgen

This will output a new GUID, e.g.

cc23b318-156e-473f-aa6e-517bf091a0f0

Leadbelly

Maybe download and install the Windows SDK separately? Although it's a lot for one utility - it would be quicker to write your own than to wait for the download. – Leadbelly

incases where i can't download due to some reasons what can be another alternative than SDK – Valenciavalenciennes

If you have no other alternative you'll probably need to write your own GUID generator – Leadbelly

You need to use the -c option on uuidgen for a windows installer project file. – Melitamelitopol

Funny thing, I have three different versions of VS but uuidgen was not in the PATH for me. Also, it doesn't seem to be really random but time-based (Unix versions of this utility have a -r and -t flags to specify if you want it random-based or time-based. – Schuster

Can I store it on a batch variable? – Appurtenant

IN VS2022 command prompt it's called guidgen – Albin

This should not be marked correct, as most users do not have the SDK. Calling powershell from cmd is the way to go, as various answers below describe. – Basham

Answer 2

Try this if you have powershell environment.

FOR /F %a IN ('POWERSHELL -COMMAND "$([guid]::NewGuid().ToString())"') DO ( SET NEWGUID=%a )

Then ready Guid value from %NEWGUID%

Anneliese

If writing a batch file (.bat), don't forget to double the % in the FOR statement (so the line should read FOR /F %%a IN ('POWERSHELL -COMMAND "$([guid]::NewGuid().ToString())"') DO ( SET NEWGUID=%%a )) – Nightlong

@Soundararajan powershell and .NET is available in all Windows versions since Vista – Impoverished

Answer 3

easy to do in powershell

[guid]::NewGuid()

Sumatra

Even easier now: New-Guid – Child

Answer 4

1.Create a file named myuuid.vbs with the content

set obj = CreateObject("Scriptlet.TypeLib")  
WScript.StdOut.WriteLine Mid(obj.GUID, 2, 36)

2.goto command prompt

cscript //NoLogo myuuid.vbs

Using JAVA code

    UUID uuid = UUID.randomUUID();
    String randomUUIDString = uuid.toString();

Casimiracasimire

@Valenciavalenciennes this is VB Script code that will do your task you don't need any special env for this just follow 2 steps mentioned – Casimiracasimire

@Valenciavalenciennes have you followed step 2 exactly mentioned ? from command line it should be "script //NoLogo myuuid.vbs " – Casimiracasimire

@Valenciavalenciennes type "cscript //NoLogo myuuid.vbs" – Casimiracasimire

@Valenciavalenciennes devguru.com/technologies/vbscript/quickref/… here is example how to create file using VBS and it is already stored in variable OBJ , I am not much aware about VBS otherwise I would have told you :) – Casimiracasimire

Install cygwin, and ensure you have the util-linux package. That will give you a uuidgen command. – Budbudapest

Answer 5

This will copy a new GUID to your clipboard:

POWERSHELL -c "[guid]::NewGuid().ToString().ToUpper()" | CLIP

Recent versions have cmdlets like this:

POWERSHELL -c "New-Guid | Set-Clipboard"

Antilogy

Answer 6

There is no built-in command available that does that. Either write your own, or get an existing one.

A simple program that outputs a GUID to the console could be written using C#:

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        System.Console.WriteLine(System.Guid.NewGuid().ToString());
    }
}

Place the above snippet in a file name guidgen.cs and then compile it using the following command line (.NET Framework 2.0 would have to be installed on your system):

%WINDIR%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\csc.exe guidgen.cs 

This will create an executable named guidgen.exe.

Leonardo

seems like C#. well i have an very old pc with no .NET framwork will this work or do you some solution other than this ? – Valenciavalenciennes

@Pratik: How old? Is it really running MS-DOS? Do you have any compiler available at all? – Leonardo

dos version 5.1.2600 on Windows XP. i don't have any idea about compilers – Valenciavalenciennes

Any idea why I'm not able to clip the output in bash as $ guidgen | clip? I'm having to wrap this in a function and export it as guidgen() { echo "$(guidgen.exe)"; } export -f guidgen (see #1500999). – Substratosphere

The ToString call is not necessary as WriteLine has an overload for System.Object, which does the same. Not sure if creating the string instance is worse than boxing performance-wise, but it certainly is longer and less readable. – Tiossem

Answer 7

If you want to do it with pure cmd commands, you can use something like that (this is not a true GUID but it can help depending on your context) :

@call :GetGuid NewGuid
@echo My new GUID : %NewGuid%

@goto :eof


:GetGuid
 @set _guid=%computername%%date%%time%
 @set _guid=%_guid:/=%
 @set _guid=%_guid:.=%
 @set _guid=%_guid: =%
 @set _guid=%_guid:,=%
 @set _guid=%_guid::=%
 @set _guid=%_guid:-=%
 @set %1=%_guid%
@goto :eof

Thieve

Save the contents as a .BAT file and run it. Works on my machine (Windows 8). – Auspice

Better to do it in a .CMD file to be interpreted by CMD.EXE instead of COMMAND.COM ;-) differencebetween.net/technology/difference-between-cmd-and-bat – Thieve

why don't just put @echo off at the beginning instead of prefixing every commands with @? – Impoverished

Prefixing every commands with a @ is useful when you are debugging your script. If you suspect that a line is not running well, just suppress the @ for this line and re-run your script. You will see at the console what's happening. – Thieve

Answer 8

try with uuid.bat Without arguments it will just echo the generated uuid:

c:\>uuid.bat

2186cb38-d649-4c99-b7cc-c505e4dae9c2

If argument is passed it will be stored in a variable with the same name:

call uuid.bat my_uuid
echo %my_uuid%

94772f66-8bca-468e-9e9a-de0d9ee05cc1

For windows formatted GUIDs you can use guid.bat:

for /f %a in ('guid.bat') do set guid=%a
echo %guid%

Pinard

Answer 9

If you have dotnet installed:

$ dotnet tool install -g guid
$ guid
bf4be9d0-7d1b-485c-a435-d07fd7b892f0
$ guid help
Usage:

    guid [option]

Where [option] is an optional single character that controls formatting:

    N    B382C3F44E604D08B48A2D342A659B4E
    D    B382C3F4-4E60-4D08-B48A-2D342A659B4E
    B    {B382C3F4-4E60-4D08-B48A-2D342A659B4E}
    P    (B382C3F4-4E60-4D08-B48A-2D342A659B4E)

When unspecified, 'd' formatting is used. Use lowercase [option] for lowercase output.

Astraphobia

Answer 10

One could abuse bitsadmin to generate a GUID. This will be profoundly faster than calling PowerShell from a Batch script.

@echo off & setlocal

for /f "delims={}" %%I in ('bitsadmin /rawreturn /create guid') do set "GUID=%%~I"
>NUL bitsadmin /cancel {%GUID%}

echo Your new GUID is %GUID%.  Neat.

If you want to keep the surrounding braces, remove "delims={}" and replace {%GUID%} with %GUID%.

Opium

Answer 11

If the system OS does not have Windows SDK but does have a C compiler with mingw-w64 toolchain then compile this small program to generate random GUID. Imported functions are UuidCreate (rpcrt4.lib) to create random UUID and StringFromCLSID (ole32.lib) to convert UUID to wide string.

#include <Windows.h>
#include <stdio.h>

/*
 * int UuidCreate(GUID *id);
 * int StringFromCLSID(GUID *id, wchar_t **str);
 * Libraries: Rpcrt4.lib Ole32.lib
 */

int main(void)
{
    GUID id;
    wchar_t *str = NULL;

    UuidCreate(&id);
    StringFromCLSID(&id, &str);
    wprintf(L"%ls\n", str);
}

Coronograph