On Tue, Nov 09, 1999 at 10:24:39AM +0800, Trevor Phillips wrote:
> Another alternative is to get the MD5 base64 key to the URI. My query is, what
> is the chance of two URI's giving the same MD5? Is there any risk in it, or is
> MD5 guranteed to give unique ID's? (I know the risk would be SLIM, but how
> slim?) Is MD5 used regularly for this kind of thing?
Very slim :) something like 1/1000 billion, billion, billion, billion.
for a match to a particular key, though about 1/1 billion billion for
getting a collision in general. (In the region of 1 / (2^128) and 1 / (2^64)
respectively.
If you tack on the length of the string your MD5ing as well then you're
pretty much safe.
This is sufficiently small that IIRC you'll have to start taking into
consideration the chances of your computer's memory spontaneously
corrupting.
Cheers,
Ben
--
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