[3567] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Using MD5/SHA1-style hashes for document
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Brian de Alwis OTT)
Fri Oct 30 16:21:45 1998
From: Brian_de_Alwis@oti.com (Brian de Alwis OTT)
To: cryptography@c2.net ('SMTP:cryptography@c2.net')
Date: Thu, 29 Oct 1998 18:22:52 -0500
Any thoughts about using a document's hash (MD5, SHA1, etc) as a unique
document identifier or storage index? The chance of having two random
documents hash to the same value is very small (1 in 10^19 according to the
RSA data-sheets) and seems acceptable. It means that you'll only ever have
one instance of anything in your database, regardless of its title, which is
very good if you could be sticking in multiple copies of big things.
Is this an accepted practice? Are there any gotchas I should be aware of?
Your help is appreciated.
--
Brian de Alwis, Software Guy, brian_de_alwis@{oti.com,yahoo.com}
"Maybe this world is another planet's Hell." - Aldous Huxley
