A hash function is any algorithm or subroutine that maps large data sets of variable length, called keys, to smaller data sets of a fixed length. For example, a person's name, having a variable length, could be hashed to a single integer. The values returned by a hash function are called hash values, hash codes, hash sums, checksums or simply hashes.
Read more about Hash Function: Descriptions, Hash Function Algorithms, Origins of The Term, List of Hash Functions
Famous quotes containing the word function:
“The mother’s and father’s attitudes toward the child correspond to the child’s own needs.... Mother has the function of making him secure in life, father has the function of teaching him, guiding him to cope with those problems with which the particular society the child has been born into confronts him.”
—Erich Fromm (1900–1980)