The review of std.hash package

[José Armando García Sancio]

On Wed, Aug 15, 2012 at 2:40 AM, RivenTheMage <riven-mage at id.ru> wrote:
> Another example is a systematic error-correcting codes. The
> "only" difference between them and checksums is the ability to
> correct errors, not just detect them. CRC or MD5 can be viewed as
> systematic code with zero error-correcting ability.
>
> Should we mix Reed-Solomon codes and MD5 in one module? I don't think so.

Some people's point is that MD5 was consider a cryptographic digest
function 16 years ago. It is not consider cryptographically secure
today. So why make any design assumption today on how the landscape
will look tomorrow? Specially on a field that is always changing. Why
not lumped them all together and explain the current situation and
recommendation in the comments.

Looks at Python's passlib module for example. They enumerate every
password encoding scheme under the sun (except for scrypt :() and give
a recommendation on the appropriate algorithm to use in the current
computing landscape.
http://packages.python.org/passlib/lib/passlib.hash.html#module-passlib.hash

Thanks,
-Jose