Unixepochtid

Unixepochtid is a term used in informal computing discussions to describe a proposed identifier that encodes the Unix epoch timestamp together with a thread identifier (tid). It is not an official standard or widely implemented format.

Origin and usage: The term has appeared in online discussions and speculative code examples as a concept for producing unique, time-ordered identifiers that also reveal the execution context. There is no formal specification or standard governing its syntax or semantics.

Concept and format: The core idea is to concatenate an epoch timestamp with a per-thread or per-task identifier to yield an ID that is locally unique and roughly sortable by time. Possible representations include a decimal timestamp with subsecond precision followed by a colon and a tid (for example, 1700000000.123:7), or a compact encoded string (for example, 1Z1T-23). The exact format is not standardized and may vary by implementation.

Uses and considerations: Potential uses include tracing, logging, and event correlation in single-host or distributed environments. Challenges include ensuring portability across languages and systems, managing subsecond precision, potential privacy or information leakage, and avoiding collisions in high-concurrency scenarios. Because it is not standardized, adopting it requires a clear specification within a project.

See also: time_t, Unix epoch, thread ID, UUID, TSID, time-based identifiers.