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krisnova/hash-thought-experiment.md

Last active May 26, 2021 05:45
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hash-thought-experiment.md

Given an input

n = "This is a wonderful thing I would LOVE to have a deterministic hash of (somewhat quickly)"

And SOME hashing function.

In this case I just picked sha256 for the reasonable "small" ammount of possible outcomes.

f = sha256sum

I can generate a hash sum that adheres to all the fun hashing tenants: wiki

f(n) = "6c00b0a8465f0f0491ab9d5380c0a44f801f26d4222e5a1177d6ad92a672b434"

The Question(s)

Knowning that with sha256 there are 2^256 possible combinations, would it be possible to translate the hash into some other unique string taken from a set of items that also yielded 2^256 possible combinations.

Does this exist? Does this pattern have a name? Are there other functions that do this? Are there functions that would be better than sha256 for this?

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