What exactly is your problem? you happen to have the algorithm, all you have to do is write it down in perl ;) Here is a rather clumsy solution, since you don't provide a test-sample, I don't know if the results are correct:

use strict;
use warnings;
my @strings = ('abzdefghijk',
'a b z d e f g h i j k',
'',
'abzde          fghijk',);

print $_, " => ", hc($_), "\n" for @strings;

sub hc {
    my $string = shift;
    my $erg = 0;
    my $max = int(length($string) - 1);
    # this line is your algorithm!
    $erg += (ord(substr($string,$_,1)))*31**($max-$_) for 0..$max;
    $erg;
}
[download]

I'd like a way to get rid of the substr ;)

regards,
tomte

---

Hlade's Law:

If you have a difficult task, give it to a lazy person --
they will find an easier way to do it.