Create unique alphanumeric identifiers with a specified character length and proportions of alpha and numeric characters.
generate_ids(n, characters, prop_numeric = 1, n_attempt = n * 3)A factor vector of length n.
The number of unique identifiers to generate.
The number of characters to be included in each identifier.
The proportion of characters that should be numeric.
The default is 1 (i.e., all numbers). If less than 1, identifiers will
also include lowercase and uppercase letters.
The number of allowed attempts for generating the requested number of identifiers. See details for more information.
When identifiers are long (e.g., characters >= 10), it is slow and
computationally intensive to find all possible permutations of the specified
number of alpha and numeric characters.
Therefore, identifiers are generated one at a time by sampling the required
number of characters.
This greatly increases efficiency, as we don't waste time generating multiple
millions of identifiers when we might only need a few hundred.
However, this means that it is possible we could generate duplicate
identifiers.
The n_attempt argument allows us to control how many identifiers we can
generate in order to achieve our desired n unique identifiers.
If we fail to find n unique identifiers after n_attempt, the function
will error.
For example, consider a request for 1,000 identifiers, each with 2 characters
and only using numbers.
With the number 0-9, there are only 100 possible two-character permutations.
Thus, after n_attempt, the function will fail as 1,000 unique identifiers
cannot be found.
generate_ids(n = 10, characters = 5)
generate_ids(n = 100, characters = 10, prop_numeric = 0.5)
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