Hash

Hash Numbers

Hash numbers have been called the 'digital finger prints' of files. You can read a recent article about how hash numbers helped to arrest a terrorist in the U.S. See http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/09/25/tech/main5339112.shtml

See this website for more about hash 'fingerprints' of a file and read also:

http://ralphlosey.wordpress.com/computer-hash-5f0266c4c326b9a1ef9e39cb78c352dc/

The quotation below is from the above website:

I f two computer files are identical, then they will have the same hash value. Even if the files have a different name, if their contents are the same, exactly the same, they will have the same hash. This allows for easy identification and elimination of redundant documents, the mentioned deduplication process. But if you so much as change a single comma in a thousand page text, it will have a completely different hash number than the original. There are no similarities in the hash numbers based on similarities in the files. Each number is unique. That is how the math in all hashing works.

Many kinds of effective hash formulas have been invented, but two are in wide use today: the SHA-1 and MD5 algorithms. Both are very effective

You can download and compare two files' hash values using the hash tab software in our filing cabinet.

Youtube Video Showing you How to Use Hashtab: