In this tutorial, we will learn about what hash functions are and how to use Python to hash multiple lines of data. Hash functions in Python are very useful in data manipulation and encryption. By the end of this tutorial, you’ll be able to hash entire lines of data with ease!
Step 1: Understanding Hashing
Hashing is the process of converting an input of any size to a fixed-size string of text, using a mathematical function. This fixed-sized result is often a ‘digest’. This is a kind of signature for text or data of any size. Hash functions are an essential part of data structures and enable quick access and storage of the data.
Step 2: Importing the Required Modules
The Python language has a built-in library for hashing, known as the hashlib module. This library contains different types of hash functions such as SHA1, SHA256, and MD5 among others. To import hashlib into your project, use the following line of code:
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import hashlib |
Step 3: Hashing the Data
To hash the data, we will make use of the update() method provided by the hashlib module. The update() method updates the hash object with the bytes-like object. Repeated calls are equivalent to a single call with the concatenation of all the arguments. Here is an example of how to hash a single line of code:
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hash_object = hashlib.md5(b'Hello World') print(hash_object.hexdigest()) |
Step 4: Hashing Multiple Lines
But how can we hash multiple lines of data? Simply by calling the update() function multiple times. Let’s take a look at how to do it:
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hash_object = hashlib.md5() hash_object.update(b'Hello') hash_object.update(b' ') hash_object.update(b'World') print(hash_object.hexdigest()) |
In the above example, we can see that we broke down the string “Hello World” into three parts and updated our hash object three times, one for each part of the string. This allowed us to hash multiple lines of data.
Full Code:
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import hashlib hash_object = hashlib.md5() hash_object.update(b'Hello') hash_object.update(b' ') hash_object.update(b'World') print(hash_object.hexdigest()) |
Output:
b10a8db164e0754105b7a99be72e3fe5
Conclusion
Hashing is a very interesting aspect of Python programming. It is widely used in data manipulation and encryption techniques. In this tutorial, we learned about hash functions and how to use Python to hash multiple lines of data.
We also learned about the hashlib module in Python and its many functions. Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of what hashing is and how to use Python for your hashing needs.