Hash Function

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 intension of a proposition comprises whatever the proposition entails: and it includes nothing else.... The connotation or intension of a function comprises all that attribution of this predicate to anything entails as also predicable to that thing.”
    —Clarence Lewis (1883–1964)