Hash function

A hash function is a function that takes a variable-length input and produces a fixed-length output, also called a digest (or just a “hash”). Hash functions should be quick to compute, and different inputs should as far as possible produce different outputs (this is called collision-resistance).

Hash functions have both cryptographic and non-cryptographic uses. Outside cryptography, for example, hash functions can be used to generate the keys for an associative array such as a map or a dictionary.

The digest() function of the SubtleCrypto interface makes various hash functions available to web applications.