From: Justus Ohlhaver <ohlhaver@...>
Date: 2008-11-13T00:06:09+09:00
Subject: Re: Convert text string i.e 'Peter' into integer ID

Todd Benson wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 8:47 AM, Jan Friedrich
> <janfri.rubyforge@gmail.com> wrote:
>>  Digest::MD5.hexdigest('Peter')
>>  # => "6fa95b1427af77b3d769ae9cb853382f"
>>
>> Regards
>> Jan
> 
> Unless I'm missing something here, strings are just numbers in order.
> Why encode/encrypt?
> 
> Most db's should handle natural keys.
> 
> If absolutely necessary to store as number strings (I can't see why),
> look at #pack and #unpack.
> 
> Todd

Thanks a lot everybody.  I'm really impressed by the quick and useful 
feedback.

Todd, I was told that searching by integers instead of strings would 
speed up performance when using large mysql tables. Is that not so?

Justus
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