MD5() -- SSLeay 0.9.0b -- January 1999

NAME

MD5_Init, MD5_Update, MD5_Final, MD5, MD5_Transform -- MD5 message digest algorithm

SYNOPSIS

#include "MD5.h"

void MD5_Init(c)
MD5_CTX *c;

void MD5_Update(c)
MD5_CTX *c;
unsigned char *data;
unsigned long len);

void MD5_Final(c)
unsigned char *md;
MD5_CTX *c;

unsigned char *MD5(d, n, md)
unsigned long n;
unsigned char *d, *md;

void MD5_Transform(c, b)
MD5_CTX *c;
unsigned char *b;

DESCRIPTION

MD5 is a message digest algorithm that can be used to condense an arbitrary length message down to a 16 byte hash. These functions all take an MD5_CTX which contains the following:

typedef struct MD5state_st
        {
        unsigned long A,B,C,D;
        unsigned long Nl,Nh;
        unsigned long data[MD5_LBLOCK];
        int num;
        } MD5_CTX;

Since MD5 processes data in 16-byte blocks, the data subfield is used to keep 'leftover' data from one MD5_Update to the next, buffering it until the last of it is used with padding as needed during the MD5_Final call. The num subfield contains the length of data.

A, B, C and D are internal buffers used during the computation.

The other subfields keep information on the running hash.

MD5_Init() expects the caller to pass a pointer to a previously allocated MD5_CTX structure. It then initializes all subfields to 0 except for A, B, C, and D which get initialized according to the specs (see the RFC).

MD5_Update() expects len bytes of data to be hashed; the results are stored in the MD5_CTX c.

MD5_Final() provides a message digest of the data digested with MD5_Update(). The message digest is put in the md array and is MD5_DIGEST_LENGTH (16) bytes long. All subfields of the MD5_CTX c are set to zero before the routine returns.

MD5() is a convenience routine that calls MD5_Init(), MD5_Update() and then MD5_Final(). d should be a pointer to the data to be hashed and n should be the length in bytes of that data. If md is NULL, a static buffer will be used and a pointer to it returned to the caller. Otherwise the function returns a pointer to md which will contain the message digest.

If you prefer not to use the convenience routine, the functions may be called separately:

MD5_Init(...);
MD5_Update(...);
...
MD5_Update(...);
MD5_Final(...);

MD5_Transform does some endian conversions on b before calling the internal function md5_block. I don't see it used anywhere. Anybody know why it would be useful?