What is hashing?

Question

What is hashing?

Accepted Answer

Hashing is a process that transforms input data into a fixed-size string of characters, typically for data integrity and security.

Hash functions take an input (or 'message') and return a fixed-size string of bytes.
Common hash functions include MD5, SHA-1, and SHA-256.
Hashing is widely used in data structures like hash tables for efficient data retrieval.
In security, hashing is used to store passwords securely by converting them into a hash value.
Example: The string 'hello' hashed with SHA-256 produces a unique hash value.

Accepted Answer

Hashing is a common method for implementing hash tables, which store key/value pairs in a list. Hashing creates a unique hash code for each element in the array, and stores the hash code instead of the actual element. This allows for quick retrieval of items by finding the index of the desired item.

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What is hashing?

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