A hash function lies on the coronary heart of a hashing algorithm. Essentially, it’s a processing unit that takes in records of arbitrary period and gives you the output of a hard and fast length – the hash price. But, to get the hash price of a pre-set duration, you first want to divide the enter information into constant sized blocks. That is due to the fact a hash characteristic takes in statistics at a fixed-duration. Those blocks are called ‘records blocks.’
The scale of the statistics block(s) differs from one set of rules to any other. However for a selected set of rules, it stays the equal. As an example, sha-1 takes within the message/facts in blocks of 512-bit only.