kolobus/humanhash

Human-readable digests.

humanhash

humanhash provides human-readable representations of digests.

Example

>>> import humanhash

>>> digest = '7528880a986c40e78c38115e640da2a1'
>>> humanhash.humanize(digest)
'three-georgia-xray-jig'
>>> humanhash.humanize(digest, words=6)
'high-mango-white-oregon-purple-charlie'

>>> humanhash.uuid()
('potato-oranges-william-friend', '9d2278759ae24698b1345525bd53358b')

Caveats

Don't store the humanhash output, as its statistical uniqueness is only around 1 in 4.3 billion. Its intended use is as a human-readable (and, most importantly, memorable) representation of a longer digest, unique enough for display in a user interface, where a user may need to remember or verbally communicate the identity of a hash, without having to remember a 40-character hexadecimal sequence. Nevertheless, you should keep original digests around, then pass them through humanize() only as you're displaying them.

How It Works

The procedure for generating a humanhash involves compressing the input to a fixed length (default: 4 bytes), then mapping each of these bytes to a word in a pre-defined wordlist (a default wordlist is supplied with the library). This algorithm is consistent, so the same input, given the same wordlist, will always give the same output. You can also use your own wordlist, and specify a different number of words for output.

Inspiration

• Chroma-Hash: a human-viewable representation of a hash (albeit not one that can be output on a terminal, or shouted down a hallway).
• The NATO Phonetic Alphabet: A great example of the trade-off between clarity of human communication and byte-wise efficiency of representation.

(Un)license

This is free and unencumbered software released into the public domain.

Anyone is free to copy, modify, publish, use, compile, sell, or distribute this software, either in source code form or as a compiled binary, for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, and by any means.

In jurisdictions that recognize copyright laws, the author or authors of this software dedicate any and all copyright interest in the software to the public domain. We make this dedication for the benefit of the public at large and to the detriment of our heirs and successors. We intend this dedication to be an overt act of relinquishment in perpetuity of all present and future rights to this software under copyright law.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

For more information, please refer to http://unlicense.org/