> crc32, md5 and sha1 functions, implemented in PHP, are widely used for
> computing "fingerprint" of any data. But current implementation has not
very
> good limitation - there is no way to get/set current state vector of these
> functions. So, we have to pass whole amount of data as argument of these
> functions at once instead of sequently data processing.
> Of course, we can use md5_file() or sha1_file() to get hash of huge
amounts
> of data, but there is missing crc32_file() analog.
>
> I think, the best way is to add optional parameter to these functions,
which
> will allow to get/set current state vector of hash algorithms. This change
> will not break backward compatibility.
>
I like the concept of exposing hash contexts to userspace the way they work
in C (HASH_init(), HASH_update(), HASH_final()) but I think the more
appropriate place to put this "extended" functionality is in the mhash
extension.
-Sara
