Overview

This project demonstrates how to compute the SHA-256 hash of a string in Rust using the sha2 crate. It provides a simple example of creating a SHA-256 object, updating it with input data, and obtaining the hash digest in a hexadecimal format.

Contributing

• If you intend to contribute to this project, fork the repository and make a pull request.

Installation

• To use this project, you need to have Rust installed on your machine.
• If Rust is not installed, follow the instructions on the official Rust website to install it.
• Add the sha2 crate to your Cargo.toml file to include the SHA-256 functionality.
• After installing Rust, clone this repository or copy the code into a Rust project, Compile and run the code using cargo run.

Usage

• To use this code, you can clone the repository.
• Compile the Rust code using cargo:

cargo build
cargo run

Output

• When you run the program, it will output the SHA-256 hash of the string "Hello, World!" in hexadecimal format:

SHA-256: dffd6021bb2bd5b0af676290809ec3a53191dd81c7f70a4b28688a362182986f

Modifying the Input

• You can change the input string by modifying the input variable. For example:

let input = b"Your new input here!";

Code Explanation

• Dependencies: The sha2 crate provides the Sha256 struct for computing SHA-256 hashes, along with the Digest trait for creating and updating hash values.
• Creating the Hasher: We initialize a new SHA-256 object using Sha256::new(), which is the state of the hash computation.
• Updating the Hasher: The input string "Hello, World!" (as bytes) is provided to the hasher.update() function, which processes the input data.
• Finalizing the Hash: After processing the input, we call hasher.finalize() to complete the computation and produce the final hash value
• Displaying the Hash: The resulting hash is printed in hexadecimal format using the println! macro.

Acknowledgments

• Rust

Clone the repository or copy the source code into a Rust project.

   git clone https://github.com/cypriansakwa/SHA_256_Hash_in_Rust.git
   cd SHA_256_Hash_in_Rust