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 hashing that assisted my search for the perfect[-enough], cheap[-enough] hash. Ended up going with MD5 in the end anyway!