Unique File Generator (F# Version)

• Quickly and easily create an arbitrary number of unique (by name and content) files
• Use optional parameters to customize files according to your needs
• Checks remaining drive space to ensure the drive is not unintentionally filled
• Requirement: .NET 9 (or higher) runtime

But... why?

In a previous position, I had use for such a utility once to avoid unneeded warnings when testing file uploads in a system that warned about duplicate files and filenames.

However, I only created this utility to get more experience with F# and functional programming in general. (I have also written similar tools in C# and Rust before, so it seems this has become one of my go-to projects for getting experience with languages. 😅)

Usage

At the minimum, you must specify the number of files you want to generate with the default options. This should be a single positive integer (with optional commas or underscores).

dotnet run -- 1000

Note

-- is needed after dotnet run to signal that the arguments are for this application and not the dotnet command.

Options

If desired, files can be customized via the options below. You must supply a value for each option passed.

Flag	Description
-p	Prepends a specified prefix to each filename.
-b	The base filename length. Random alphanumeric characters will be used. The maximum is 100. If not specified, a default of 50 will be used.
-e	The extension to append to each generated filename. The initial period is optional. If not specified, no extension will be added.
-s	The size in bytes of each new file. Files will be populated with random alphanumeric characters. If not specified, each file will contain its own name.
-o	The output subdirectory in which files should be created. The directory must already exist. If not specified, defaults to "output".
-d	A delay in milliseconds to be applied between each file's creation.

Examples

dotnet run -- 50,000 -p Random-

Creates 50,000 files, each named similarly to "Random-##########", in a subfolder named "output". No files have extensions.

dotnet run -- 100 -p "TEST " -b 7 -e txt -o "My Output Folder" -s 1000000 -d 1000

Creates 100 1MB files, each named similarly to "TEST #######.txt", with a 1-second break between each file's creation, in a subfolder called "My Output Folder".

dotnet run -- --help

See the in-program instructions.