id,summary,reporter,owner,description,type,status,component,version,resolution,keywords,cc,guest,host
5157,"RTUuidFromUtf16 implementation is too draconian, and the error reporting is poor",Kohsuke Kawaguchi,,"The implementation doesn't accept typical variants like ""{936244ab-ddf7-4ea4-a439-d0c0ccb9ee46}"" (with brackets) or ""936244abddf74ea4a439d0c0ccb9ee46"" (without hyphen), even though VirtualBox uses some of these formats by itself, as can be seen in the following error message:

  : 0x80070057 (Cannot register the hard disk '/tmp/slave1/distfork4413096236958589915.tmp/applianceBuilder/key.vmdk' with UUID {936244ab-ddf7-4ea4-a439-d0c0ccb9ee46} because a hard disk '/home/kohsuke/ws/aklite/builder/applianceBuilder/key.vmdk' with UUID {936244ab-ddf7-4ea4-a439-d0c0ccb9ee46} already exists in the media registry ('/home/kohsuke/.VirtualBox/VirtualBox.xml'))

Furthermore, failing to parse an UUID often doesn't result in an error right away, and instead VirtualBox moves on as if the zero UUID is passed --- one such example can be seen in Guid::Guid(const Btr&)

Since often user-specified UUID values are fed directly into here, I suggest RTUuidFromUtf16 to be modified slightly to skip '{', '}' and '-' to accomodate variations in the format. 

I was using Python API for VirtualBox, and Python's UUID support uses {-bracketd notation, so this change improves the user experience at multiple levels.",defect,closed,other,VirtualBox 3.0.8,fixed,,,other,other