Sha256 Hashes in Perl

Our example demonstrates how to compute SHA256 hashes in Perl. SHA256 hashes are frequently used to compute short identities for binary or text blobs. For example, TLS/SSL certificates use SHA256 to compute a certificate’s signature.

use strict;
use warnings;
use Digest::SHA qw(sha256_hex);

my $s = "sha256 this string";

# Create a new SHA256 hash object
my $sha = Digest::SHA->new(256);

# Add data to the hash object
$sha->add($s);

# Get the hexadecimal representation of the hash
my $hash = $sha->hexdigest;

print "$s\n";
print "$hash\n";

In this example, we use the Digest::SHA module, which provides an interface to the SHA family of hash algorithms.

We start by creating a new SHA256 hash object using Digest::SHA->new(256).

The add method is used to add data to the hash object. In this case, we’re adding the string $s.

Finally, we use the hexdigest method to get the finalized hash result as a hexadecimal string.

Running the program computes the hash and prints it in a human-readable hex format:

$ perl sha256_hashes.pl
sha256 this string
1af1dfa857bf1d8814fe1af8983c18080019922e557f15a8a...

You can compute other hashes using a similar pattern. For example, to compute SHA512 hashes, you can use Digest::SHA->new(512).

Note that if you need cryptographically secure hashes, you should carefully research hash strength!