Good choice for a lightweight checksum algorithm?

Question

I find myself needing to generate a checksum for a string of data, for consistency purposes. The broad idea is that the client can regenerate the checksum based on the payl

Answer 1

Here's a relatively simple one I've 'invented' - there's no mathematical research behind it but it's extremely fast and works in practice. I've also included the Java equivalent that tests the algorithm and shows that there's less than 1 in 10,000,000 chance of failure (it takes a minute or two to run).

JavaScript

function getCrc(s) {
    var result = 0;
    for(var i = 0; i < s.length; i++) {
        var c = s.charCodeAt(i);
        result = (result << 1) ^ c;
    }
    return result;
}

Java

package test;

import java.util.*;

public class SimpleCrc {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        final Random randomGenerator = new Random();
        int lastCrc = -1;
        int dupes = 0;
        for(int i = 0; i < 10000000; i++) {
            final StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
            for(int j = 0; j < 1000; j++) {
                final char c = (char)(randomGenerator.nextInt(128 - 32) + 32);
                sb.append(c);
            }
            final int crc = crc(sb.toString());
            if(lastCrc == crc) {
                dupes++;
            }
            lastCrc = crc;
        }
        System.out.println("Dupes: " + dupes);
    }

    public static int crc(String string) {
        int result = 0;
        for(final char c : string.toCharArray()) {
            result = (result << 1) ^ c;
        }
        return result;
    }
}