From blog.sonatype.com
In software, the term “hash” has several meanings, but what we discuss here is loosely focused on what Wikipedia calls a “cryptographic hash function”.
What is hashing?
In short, hashes are strings of letters and numbers meant to assign a unique value to a set of information. You may have seen articles here on Sonatype’s blog or elsewhere referring to hashing. If you’ve seen a random-looking text string like the one below, it may have been a “hash.”