String-Random-NiceURL - v0.01
=============================

Random ID strings suitable for URLs.

This module allows you to create sparse and distributed IDs such as those used
for YouTube videos. It uses a modified base 64 character set but also makes
sure that the first and last chars of your ID are not the dash or underscore
characters (this helps some programs detect the URLs correctly).

Any length IDs (greater than two chars) can be created and could be used for
blog posts, short URLs, images or videos.

EXAMPLE
=======

    id(2)  => 6p
    id(6)  => NIK_qV
    id(11) => 2qUROkj-1X6
    ...etc...

For each length (len), the number of combinations is 62^2 * 64^(len-2):

* length 2 => 3844
* length 3 => 246016
* length 4 => 15745024  (over 15 million combinations already)
* length 5 => 1.008e+09
* length 6 => 6.449e+10
* length 7 => 4.127e+12
* length 8 => 2.642e+14
* length 9 => 1.691e+16 (lots and lots)

Out of interest, YouTube use 11 chars (but also the first and last letters can
include dashes or underscores), so their total number of combinations is 64^11,
which is 7.379e+19. (For comparison, this module would produce 6.925e+19
combinations at 11 chars, so not much less but much nicer due to the
constrained first and last chars).

INSTALLATION
============

To install this module, run the following commands:

	perl Makefile.PL
	make
	make test
	make install

SUPPORT AND DOCUMENTATION
=========================

After installing, you can find documentation for this module with the
perldoc command.

    perldoc String::Random::NiceURL

You can also look for information at:

    RT, CPAN's request tracker
        http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/Bugs.html?Dist=String-Random-NiceURL

    AnnoCPAN, Annotated CPAN documentation
        http://annocpan.org/dist/String-Random-NiceURL

    CPAN Ratings
        http://cpanratings.perl.org/d/String-Random-NiceURL

    Search CPAN
        http://search.cpan.org/dist/String-Random-NiceURL

AUTHOR, COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE
=============================

Written by Andrew Chilton, <andy at chilts dot org>

Copyright (c) 2010, Apps Attic Ltd, all rights reserved.

http://www.appsattic.com/

This module is free software. You can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the terms of the Artistic License 2.0.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without any
warranty; without even the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a
particular purpose.

A copy of this license is supplied with the distribution as the file COPYING.
