How do one-way hash functions work? (Edited)

Question

I read the Wikipedia article about md5 hashes but I still can\'t understand how a hash can\'t be \"reconstituted\" back to the original text.

Could someone explain t

Answer 1

array
With some squinting, associative arrays look very much like hashes. The major differences were the lack of the % symbol on hash names, and that one could only assign to them one key at a time. Thus, one would say $foo{'key'} = 1;, but only @keys = keys(foo);. Familiar functions like each, keys, and values worked as they do now (and delete was added in Perl 2).

Perl 3 had three whole data types: it had the % symbol on hash names, allowed an entire hash to be assigned to at once, and added dbmopen (now deprecated in favour of tie). Perl 4 used comma-separated hash keys to emulate multidimensional arrays (which are now better handled with array references).

Perl 5 took the giant leap of referring to associative arrays as hashes. (As far as I know, it is the first language to have referred to the data structure thus, rather than "hash table" or something similar.) Somewhat ironically, it also moved the relevant code from hash.c into hv.c.

Nomenclature
Dictionaries, as explained earlier, are unordered collections of values indexed by unique keys. They are sometimes called associative arrays or maps. They can be implemented in several ways, one of which is by using a data structure known as a hash table (and this is what Perl refers to as a hash).

Perl's use of the term "hash" is the source of some potential confusion, because the output of a hashing function is also sometimes called a hash (especially in cryptographic contexts), and because hash tables aren't usually called hashes anywhere else.

To be on the safe side, refer to the data structure as a hash table, and use the term "hash" only in obvious, Perl-specific contexts.