java.util.UUID.fromString not checking length

Question

When I looked into the implementation of java.util.UUID.fromString, I found that it doesn\'t check for the UUID length. Is there any particular reason for this?

Answer 1

Only the original authors of the UUID class could tell you why they chose not to check the component lengths in the fromString method, but I suspect they were trying to heed Postel's law:

Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send.

You can always check the input against a regular expression like this one:

[0-9a-fA-F]{8}(?:-[0-9a-fA-F]{4}){3}-[0-9a-fA-F]{12}