Digest/SHA version 1.01 ======================= The Digest::SHA module provides a Perl interface to all varieties of the Secure Hash Algorithm specified in the current NIST Secure Hash Standard (FIPS PUB 180-2). In other words, the module supports SHA-1, SHA-256, SHA-384, and SHA-512. The routines underlying Digest::SHA are written in C for speed. Whereas most message digest packages are restricted to byte-oriented data, the full SHA standard calls for bit-oriented inputs as well. The Digest::SHA module accepts both types of input, and allows digest calculations to be performed directly, or iteratively in stages. The underlying C code is designed to be portable, and requires no special libraries beyond those found with typical compilers. However, if your compiler can't handle 64-bit integral types (i.e. long long), the package will omit support for SHA-384 and SHA-512. The SHA algorithm code maps as closely as possible to the NIST specification in the interest of achieving correctness. Later versions of this module will focus on additional performance optimizations. The tests subdirectory (t/*.t) contains an extensive set of SHA vectors compiled from various sources. Of particular interest are the NIST vectors, which examine a large variety of bit-strings and byte-strings (see the "t/nist/COPYRIGHT" file for details). Also useful are the bit-vectors compiled by Jim Gillogly, which check the behavior of implementations for input strings that exceed 2^32 bits in length. INSTALLATION To install this module type the following: perl Makefile.PL make make test make install DEPENDENCIES None. COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE Copyright (C) 2003 Mark Shelor This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.