I’ve been writing docs for Reconnoiter. I selected DocBookfor two reasons. First, I hoped that number of polished documents I’ve seen written in DocBook would mean that if this manual grows in size and usefulness we might be able to achieve some polish “on the cheap.” Second, our open-source sitehas a really nice automated systems for auto-publishing project documentation… if it is in DocBook. That said, DocBook is a complete pain in the ass.
So, I was implementing this thing… It seems that all my discussions start like this. Sigh. So, I was implementing this caching systems for file signatures. I needed a hashing algorithm with excellent distribution and low calculation cost. My first assumption was that MD5 didn’t meet my needs due to its computational costs… I was surprised.I found a great exploratory article on hashingthat assisted my search for the perfect[-enough], cheap[-enough] hash.
