Names to ids

[Simon Wistow]

On Wed, Jan 25, 2006 at 02:05:43PM +0000, Paul Makepeace said:
> What's the rationale for the requirement to hash to an integer rather
> than leave it as is / base 62 / whatever else?

I'm playing with Image::Seek and the id it requires must be a number. 

I've played with Math::BigInt and md5 I was just wondering if I'd missed 
anything particularly funky.

The big limiter, as you point out, is the overflow. Pesky computers and 
their arbitary limitations. When are Intel releasing a proper Turing 
machine. With infinitely long tape there *is* no swapping.