Windows XP, Python 2.5:
hash('http://stackoverflow.com') Result: 1934711907
Google App Engine (http://shell.appspot.com/):
hash('http://stackoverflow.com') Result: -5768830964305142685
Why is that? How can I have a hash function that will give me same results across different platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac)?
As stated in the documentation, built-in hash() function is not designed for storing resulting hashes somewhere externally. It is used to provide object's hash value, to store them in dictionaries and so on. It's also implementation-specific (GAE uses a modified version of Python). Check out:
>>> class Foo:
... pass
...
>>> a = Foo()
>>> b = Foo()
>>> hash(a), hash(b)
(-1210747828, -1210747892)
As you can see, they are different, as hash() uses object's __hash__ method instead of 'normal' hashing algorithms, such as SHA.
Given the above, the rational choice is to use the hashlib module.
Hash results varies between 32bit and 64bit platforms
If a calculated hash shall be the same on both platforms consider using
def hash32(value):
return hash(value) & 0xffffffff
This is the hash function that Google uses in production for python 2.5:
def c_mul(a, b):
return eval(hex((long(a) * b) & (2**64 - 1))[:-1])
def py25hash(self):
if not self:
return 0 # empty
value = ord(self[0]) << 7
for char in self:
value = c_mul(1000003, value) ^ ord(char)
value = value ^ len(self)
if value == -1:
value = -2
if value >= 2**63:
value -= 2**64
return value