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naaaavi

Naming avoiding ambiguity automatically assigning valid identifiers

What is it?

Naaaavi (pronounced nah-vee as if someone hadn't injected a load of ambiguous confusing a characters) is a simple Python tool for generating identifiers. It is an ambitious attempt to solve one of the most difficult problems in computer science: naming things. Naaavi attempts to generate identifiers that:

  • use a character set (or other system) that aims to be human-friendly
  • can be checksummed
  • avoid ambiguity by testing the identifier against several rejectors
  • are somewhat chronologically sortable
  • are generated in a predictable fashion

It generates human-friendly identifiers using diceware (soon) or the zbase32 alphabet, and allows for screening of common sources of confusion such as look-alike pairs and repetitive characters. Naaaavi also provides limited support for generating ZPL to print your nice new identifiers.

What is it not?

Naaaavi does not:

  • randomly generate identifiers
  • encode anything into the identifiers
  • generate universally or globally unique identifiers

How do I use it?

Generate identifiers

$ naaaavi generate --alphabet zbase32 --checksum luhn_mod_n --size 5 --rejectors max_repeats:2 min_unique:3 ismp_flips: better_profanity: -n 10 --prefix 'HOOT-' --upper
HOOT-YYBYN4     HOOT-YYBYN      4       zbase32 luhn_mod_n      max_repeats:2;min_unique:3;ismp_flips:;better_profanity:        0.4.1
HOOT-YYBYDA     HOOT-YYBYD      A       zbase32 luhn_mod_n      max_repeats:2;min_unique:3;ismp_flips:;better_profanity:        0.4.1
HOOT-YYBYRS     HOOT-YYBYR      S       zbase32 luhn_mod_n      max_repeats:2;min_unique:3;ismp_flips:;better_profanity:        0.4.1
HOOT-YYBYFW     HOOT-YYBYF      W       zbase32 luhn_mod_n      max_repeats:2;min_unique:3;ismp_flips:;better_profanity:        0.4.1
HOOT-YYBYG1     HOOT-YYBYG      1       zbase32 luhn_mod_n      max_repeats:2;min_unique:3;ismp_flips:;better_profanity:        0.4.1
HOOT-YYBY8O     HOOT-YYBY8      O       zbase32 luhn_mod_n      max_repeats:2;min_unique:3;ismp_flips:;better_profanity:        0.4.1
HOOT-YYBYEQ     HOOT-YYBYE      Q       zbase32 luhn_mod_n      max_repeats:2;min_unique:3;ismp_flips:;better_profanity:        0.4.1
HOOT-YYBYJC     HOOT-YYBYJ      C       zbase32 luhn_mod_n      max_repeats:2;min_unique:3;ismp_flips:;better_profanity:        0.4.1
HOOT-YYBYKK     HOOT-YYBYK      K       zbase32 luhn_mod_n      max_repeats:2;min_unique:3;ismp_flips:;better_profanity:        0.4.1
HOOT-YYBYME     HOOT-YYBYM      E       zbase32 luhn_mod_n      max_repeats:2;min_unique:3;ismp_flips:;better_profanity:        0.4.1

Validate identifiers

$ naaaavi validate --alphabet zbase32 --checksum luhn_mod_n --barcodes HOOT-YYBYN.4 HOOT-YYBYN4 YYBYN4 YYBYM4 YYBYN5
HOOT-YYBYN.4    1
HOOT-YYBYN4     1
YYBYN4  1
YYBYM4  0
YYBYN5  0

Rejectors

  • max_repeats will reject any identifier which repeats a particular symbol more than n times consecutively
  • min_unique will reject any identifier that does not have at least n unique characters
  • ismp_flips will reject any identifier that has at least one look alike pair noted as potentially confusing by the Institute for Safe Medication Practices
  • ban_list will reject any identifier that has a prefix or suffix in your list
  • regex_list will reject any identifier that searches positive against a list of regular expressions
  • better_profanity (requires pip install better_profanity) will overzealously reject any identifier that could be mildly amusing
  • not_exclusive will reject any identifier that exclusively contains a set of case-sensitive symbols

Notes

I work in COG and would love to use this too!

Naaaavi does not generate globally or universally unique identifiers, so please get in touch to make sure our (identifier) worlds don't collide.

I don't like your funny command name

The navi command is provided as a synonym of naaaavi so you don't have to remember that there are currently four a characters in naaaavi.