Topic: What is the difference between char[32] hashes and char[64] hashes? (Read 1032 times)
September 12, 2011, 01:13:04 AM
Ahh, makes sense - I should have caught that. Sorry for the newbie question and thanks for the help!
September 12, 2011, 12:56:43 AM
A hexadecimal character represents 4 bits; a 'char' (aka a byte) represents 8 bits. So 64 hex characters stands for 256 bits, as does 32 bytes. So the difference is notation, nothing else.
September 12, 2011, 12:46:35 AM
I think you have the difference between a character and a byte confused.
They are 64 hexadecimal characters long. That means 32 bytes. Each byte takes two symbols (0-9, A-F) to represent in hexadecimal, because there's 8 bits in a byte, and each hex symbol only represents 4 bits.
They are 64 hexadecimal characters long. That means 32 bytes. Each byte takes two symbols (0-9, A-F) to represent in hexadecimal, because there's 8 bits in a byte, and each hex symbol only represents 4 bits.
September 12, 2011, 12:42:22 AM
This is probably a simple question but I haven't seen an answer anywhere.
The protocol describes a number of char[32] hashes:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Protocol_specification#getblocks
But it looks like all the hashes are 64 characters long:
http://blockexplorer.com/rawblock/000000000019d6689c085ae165831e934ff763ae46a2a6c172b3f1b60a8ce26f
Why is this?
Base58 encoding it seems to make it 40 characters long. Is it truncating the hash and only using the first 32 characters of it?
The protocol describes a number of char[32] hashes:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Protocol_specification#getblocks
But it looks like all the hashes are 64 characters long:
http://blockexplorer.com/rawblock/000000000019d6689c085ae165831e934ff763ae46a2a6c172b3f1b60a8ce26f
Why is this?
Base58 encoding it seems to make it 40 characters long. Is it truncating the hash and only using the first 32 characters of it?
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