How to Generate unique file names in C#

Question

I have implemented an algorithm that will generate unique names for files that will save on hard drive. I\'m appending DateTime: Hours,Minutes,Second an

Answer 1

If the readability of the file name isn't important, then the GUID, as suggested by many will do. However, I find that looking into a directory with 1000 GUID file names is very daunting to sort through. So I usually use a combination of a static string which gives the file name some context information, a timestamp, and GUID.

For example:

public string GenerateFileName(string context)
{
    return context + "_" + DateTime.Now.ToString("yyyyMMddHHmmssfff") + "_" + Guid.NewGuid().ToString("N");
}

filename1 = GenerateFileName("MeasurementData");
filename2 = GenerateFileName("Image");

This way, when I sort by filename, it will automatically group the files by the context string and sort by timestamp.

Note that the filename limit in windows is 255 characters.