Convert GUID to Numeric Equivalent

Question

I\'ve been asked to export a list of users from ActiveDirectory, and Convert the GUIDs to a numeric equivalent for display (so I\'ll .ToString that after). I\'ve done some searc

Answer 1

"Numeric" doesn't make sense in VB w.r.t Guid. There is no 128-bit numeric types in .net. The only 128-bit type is Decimal; but that doesn't seem to make sense to convert a Guid to a Decimal. I would simply use ToByteArray and display the byte values as hex.

Alternatively, make sure the last byte in the array given to BigInteger is zero to get a postive value. e.g.::

var bytes = Guid.NewGuid().ToByteArray(); 
Array.Resize(ref bytes, 17); 
var bigInt = new BigInteger(bytes);
var value = bigInt.ToString();

Answer 2

You could simply convert Guid to numeric representation using ToString("n") :

Guid.NewGuid().ToString("n")

will return something like "5ee575bd995b419499aff6d6967c4a35"