Szathmáry László honlapja @ DEIK | Nim2 / generate a random hash

See also std/hashes .

Task: you want to generate a random hash. For instance, you want to store key/value pairs in a dictionary and you need a unique hash for the keys. Or, you want to create a temp file and you want to give it a unique name and for that you need a hash value.

In a previous post we saw the epochTime() function. We'll use that.

It's not a cryptographically secure method but for a simple task it should be enough.

import std/strutils # strip, split, join
import std/strformat # &"Hello {name}!"

import std/times
import std/hashes

let
et = epochTime()
h = hash(et).abs # make it positive

echo hash(et) # -4939203597474457342 ; can be negative

echo h # 4939203597474457342

echo &"{h:x}" # 448b9380bccbe6fe ; converted to hex

The hash() function is heavily overloaded, thus you can pass almost anything to it. It also accepts a string, so in the worst case just convert your thing to string with the `$` operator and pass it like that.

hash() returns an int that can be a negative value too.