Mhash 0.90
               Copyright (c) 2000, Frey Kuo

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    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
    it under the terms of the Artistic License, a copy of which can be
    found with perl.

  THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER
  EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED
  WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
  IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES RESULTING FROM
  THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE.                      
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       *** This is beta software -- use at your own risk ***

This is Mhash, an XS-based perl interface to the popular mhash hash library.

This is an perl interface to the Mhash hash library, which provides a 
uniform interface to a large number of hash algorithms 
(also known as "one-way" algorithms).  These algorithms can be used to 
compute checksums, message digests, and other signatures. Mhash support 
HMAC generation (a mechanism for message authentication using
cryptographic hash functions, and is described in RFC2104). HMAC can be 
used to create message digests using a secret key, so that these message 
digests cannot be regenerated (or replaced) by someone else.  At the time 
of writing this, the library supports the algorithms: SHA1, GOST, HAVAL, 
MD5, RIPEMD160, TIGER, and CRC32 checksums.

Prerequisites
--------------

In addition to this module, you must install the mhash library. 
Please download and install the latest mhash-x.x.x.tar.gz at
ftp://mhash.sourceforge.net/dl/.  As of this writing, the latest is 
mhash-0.8.3.tar.gz.  

Additional information about the mhash library can be found at
http://mhash.sourceforge.net.

The MHASH library MUST be found in your library path when using this 
module.  In Linux, libmhash is defaultly installed in /usr/local/lib 
-- in this case, be sure that the /usr/local/lib path is in your 
/etc/ld.so.conf.  Don't forget to run /sbin/ldconfig to update your 
linker cache after mhash library installation!

Installing Mhash
-----------------

standard issue:

	1. perl Makefile.PL
	2. make
	3. make test
	4. make install


Notes & Caveats
-----------------

I have only tested this module with Linux only.  I would imagine it will
work on *BSD systems also, as long as libmhash is in your library search
path.  Please report any other successful OS/Platform combinations to me.
Thanks.

There may be bugs; please report them to the below address.  I would like 
feedback from users of this module - I may change some things around 
depending on how people plan on using this module.  Constructive criticism 
always welcome from seasoned perl module writers.

Report bugs/comments to:

kero@3SHEEP.COM