[7steps2much]

You are correct, at least in theory.

Assume you have two inputs, A and B.

A may hash to: A38uT75kjGz B may hash to: A38uHso629t

So yes, if you were to cut these off after the A38u then you would no longer be able to say for sure if you hashed A or B to arrive at your hash.

Of course in practice this usually isn't a problem as long as you have "a long enough" output.

[bitkrieg]

Your example made me wonder, is there a known instance from a common hash algorithm where the input results in exactly the same string representation of the output hash? Eg. "AE485D" hashes to "AE485D". Is this even mathematically possible?

[morelisp]

The mathematical term for this is a "fixed point", where f(x) == x.

Assuming a perfectly random uniform distribution, the usual desirable property of a cryptographic hash - the probability of a hash function not having a fixed point (that is, hashing at least one x to itself) is (1-1/n)**n, where n is the number of possible outputs. As n approaches infinity - which it does pretty rapidly in this case, since we're talking about 2**32 to 2**512 in practice - this approaches 1/e, or about 37%.

So, not only is it possible, but most "good" hash functions (63% of them) will have them.

[kevinventullo]

Java’s built-in hash function for integers is the identity function.

[charcircuit]

The modulus function has this property.