Others have mentioned MD5, but I also have to ask: Are you sure the "out of memory" error doesn't indicate a problem somewhere in your code? 500 hash keys by 1000 chars each seems unlikely to cause problems unless the values associated with each key are truly huge.

To test, I just wrote a program that generates 500 hash keys, each key a string of 1000 random characters, and each value a string of 1 million random characters, and it seems to work fine.

If you are still having problems after reading the suggestions on this thread, you might post some of your code to see if anyone can provide more specific help.

        $perlmonks{seattlejohn} = 'John Clyman';

In reply to Re: Memory Restrictions by seattlejohn
in thread Memory Restrictions by artist

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.