[lug] Fwd: Simple counter?

[Anthony Foiani]

"Jeffrey S. Haemer" <jeffrey.haemer at gmail.com> writes:

>    I want something that returns me sequential integers. Â I ask it, I get
>    a 1. Â Three more times? Â I get 2,3,4. Â You ask it, you get 5, I ask
>    again, I get 6, and so on. Â If we both call it at the same time, we
>    should *not* get the same number.
>
>    Must persist over re-boots.
>
>    Sort of like /dev/urandom, but less random. :-)

cf http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2001-10-25/

>    We could all write simple programs to do this in lots of different
>    ways, but doesn't it seem like there should already be some utility
>    already out there that fits the bill?

Hm.  It was surprisingly non-simple, but I suspect that unix
greybeards could find lots of room for improvement:

  http://scrye.com/~tkil/blug/counter.c

>    Honest: this isn't "How can I write a simple program to do this?"
>    Â It's, "Hasn't someone created a simple, standard utility that does
>    this in the past 20 or 30 years?"

I wonder if 'seq' has a persistent mode somewhere...

t.