From: "Sarcar, Shourya C (GE Healthcare)" <shourya.sarcar@...>
Date: 2008-11-12T23:51:07+09:00
Subject: Re: Convert text string i.e 'Peter' into integer ID

You need to generate a SHA1 or MD5 hash from your string.

require 'digest/md5'
d = Digest::MD5.new
d.update("if you believe it, they have put a man on the moon")
uniq = d.hexdigest


> -----Original Message-----
> From: ohlhaver@gmail.com [mailto:ohlhaver@gmail.com] 

> 
> Thanks for your help. No I need to turn the string which 
> would usually be a headline ('Man lands on the moon') into a 
> unique number. The purpose is to speed up my database queries 
> when checking whether an entry with the same headline already 
> exists in the db.
> Justus