Hashing

Coming soon!

Hashing is the process of taking arbitrarily typed or sized data and creating fixed-width representation values called hashes, hash codes, hash values, or digests. This text prefers hash values and digests. Hashing is typically a one-way process, meaning that you cannot easily reconstruct the original data from the hash value. Sufficiently complex hashing algorithms have many common, real-world applications in data integrity, security, and cryptography. Though not strictly necessary, hashing is most useful when the algorithm produces the same hash value for all equivalent inputs. For example, if a hashing algorithm always produces the same value for equivalent inputs you can compare large data sets efficiently or ensure that a password is valid without storing it directly.