comment on

Nik:

How many different strings do you want to convert back and forth? For a 5 digit number, the maximum possible set of strings that you could map back and forth is under a million. It's a pretty straightforward result of the Pigeonhole Principle.

So if you want to do this, you're going to have to come up with rules to constrain your set of input strings to a set small enough to fit in the number of pigeonholes you have. *AND* you'll have to come up with a unique mapping between those strings and the numbers. (You, not us.)

The instant you have the possibility of mapping two different strings into the same number, you have lost information, and can no longer tell the two strings apart from the number. There's no way to reliably know which string to map the number to without some other source of information.

roboticus

Sorry for the troll food.

In reply to Re: Converting a number back to it's original string (that was hashed to generate that number) by roboticus
in thread Reaped: Converting a number back to it's original string (that was hashed to generate that number) by NodeReaper

Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:
<code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>
Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.


Keep It Simple, Stupid
	PerlMonks