Hello, DC>For example, file system caches fill their directories roughly equally DC>when their paths are created from MD5 hashed keys. Doing something DC>simple and unique like "URL-encoding" the key to make a legal identifier DC>(legal in the sense that it is a valid filename) wouldn't distribute as DC>evenly.
Let me point out that if you are using MD5 hashes for directory spreading (i.e. to spread a large number of files across a tree of directories so that no one directory is filled with too many files for efficient filesystem access), the easy solution is to just append the unique key that you are hashing to the files involved. For example, say your keys are e-mail addresses and you just want to use an MD5 hash to spread your data files over directories so that no one directory has too many files in it. Say your original key is [EMAIL PROTECTED] (hex encoded MD5 hash of this is RfbmPiuRLyPGGt3oHBagt). Instead of just storing the key in the file R/Rf/Rfb/Rfbm/RfbmPiuRLyPGGt3oHBagt.dat, store the key in the file [EMAIL PROTECTED] Presto... collisions are impossible. Humbly, Andrew ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Andrew Ho http://www.tellme.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Engineer [EMAIL PROTECTED] Voice 650-930-9062 Tellme Networks, Inc. 1-800-555-TELL Fax 650-930-9101 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
