Creating a hash from several Java string objects
What would be the fastest and more robust (in terms of uniqueness) way for implementing a method like public abstract String hash(String[] values); The values[] array has 100 to 1,000 members, each of a which with few dozen characters, and the method needs to be run about 10,000 times/sec on a different values[] array each time. Should a long string be build using a StringBuilder buffer and then a hash method invoked on the buffer contents, or is it better to keep invoking the hash method for each string from values[] ? Obviously a hash of at least 64 bits is needed (e.g., MD5) to avoid