fast-hashes

fast-hashes

Lightweight, zero-dependency* hashing utilities for Python — wrapping hashlib with a clean API and BLAKE2b support.

*Only colorama for pretty terminal output on non-Linux platforms.

Installation

pip install fast-hashes

Note: Native optimized bindings are available on Linux only (Ubuntu 20.04+, Debian 11+, Fedora 38+). On other platforms the library falls back to pure-Python hashlib wrappers.

Quick Start

from fast_hashes import sha256, md5, blake2

# String input
print(sha256("hello world"))
# → b94d27b9934d3e08a52e52d7da7dabfac484efe37a5380ee9088f7ace2efcde9

# Bytes input
print(md5(b"binary data"))
# → 4c3c7c067634daec9716a80ea886d734

# BLAKE2b with custom digest size
print(blake2("fast!", digest_size=16))
# → 32-char hex string

API Reference

Function	Description	Returns
md5(data)	MD5 hex digest	str
sha1(data)	SHA-1 hex digest	str
sha256(data)	SHA-256 hex digest	str
sha512(data)	SHA-512 hex digest	str
blake2(data, digest_size=32)	BLAKE2b hex digest	str

All functions accept str or bytes. Strings are automatically UTF-8 encoded.

Supported Platforms

Platform	Status
Ubuntu 20.04+	✅ Full support (native bindings)
Debian 11+	✅ Full support (native bindings)
Fedora 38+	✅ Full support (native bindings)
Arch Linux	✅ Full support (native bindings)
macOS	⚠️ Fallback (pure Python)
Windows	⚠️ Fallback (pure Python)

Benchmarks

Compared to raw hashlib calls, fast-hashes adds negligible overhead (~2μs per call) while providing:

• Automatic string-to-bytes encoding
• Consistent hex output
• BLAKE2b with configurable digest size
• Platform compatibility checks

License

MIT