From: Daniel Waite <rabbitblue@...>
Date: 2008-02-06T19:06:27+09:00
Subject: Re: Strange characters... how are they created?

Frederick Cheung wrote:
> That sort of depends how you display your SHA1 hash. The result will
> just be 20 random looking bytes (as you've got before), which doesn't
> display particularly nicely, which is why it's often written out in
> hex. However if it's never going to be read by anything approaching a
> human you might as well just store the 20 bytes without trying to
> encode them in anyway.

Wow Frederick, you just opened my eyes! Thank you!

You said...

> ...which is why it's often written out in hex.

And on a whim I tried:

Digest::SHA1.digest(...)

And lo' and behold, I got much more bizarre looking output:

>> Digest::SHA1.digest('d3:cow3:moo4:spam4:eggs')
=> "?:\231\005?5&&U\203?@\217\261\216?%t"

I had no idea there was anything other than the hexdigest method, or 
that the resulting hash could be represented so differently.

I feel like I'm moving forward, but I'm facing the wrong direction by a 
degree or two.

The output, while more similar to what Transmission is generating, isn't 
quite as "funky."
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