On Wed, Jan 13, 2010 at 15:06, James Laver <james.la...@gmail.com> wrote: > Thirdly, be aware of what hashing guarantees. It does *not* guarantee > uniqueness, it just gives you a very low chance that two files with > the same hash are different.
Well, that said, is the "very low chance" not on the order of the chance that you'll be run over by a bus in the morning, or that one of the files will be changed through cosmic rays or bit rot in the magnetic domains of the hard disk platter? In other words, is 1x10^-64 (or whatever it might be) not so small as to be effectively zero, since there are much "higher" risks (say, 1x10^-32) which you do not guard against, either? Cheers, Philip -- Philip Newton <philip.new...@gmail.com>
