Converting a string to a number by using INT (no hash method)

[Dave Angel]

On 01/22/2013 11:15 AM, Ferrous Cranus wrote:
> I just need a way to CONVERT a string(absolute path) to a 4-digit unique number with INT!!! That's all i want!! But i cannot make it work :(
>
> And the best part is that "that" number must be able to turn back into a path.
>
> This way i DON'T EVEN HAVE TO STORE THE ACTUAL HTML PAGE'S ABSOLUTE PATH!!!!
>
> 1. User requests a specific html page( .htaccess gives my script the absolute path for that .html page)
> 2. I turn the path into a 4-digitnumber
> 3. i store that number to the database. I DONT EVEN HAVE TO STORE THE PATH TO THE DATABASE ANYMORE!!! this is just great!
>

I had prepared a detailed response, showing what your choices are with 
this new constraint.  But I can see from this post here that there's no 
point, so I've thrown it out.

Either you're trolling, or you have a very limited knowledge of 
mathematics.   This isn't a programming problem, it's a simple problem 
of information theory.

Unless you constrain your users to very restrictive filenames, what you 
ask here simply cannot be done.

Perpetual motion machine, anyone?  Or a compression algorithm which can 
be applied repeatedly to a chunk of data until it shrinks down to one 
byte?  No way to do it without cheating, and the literature is full of 
examples of people cheating.


-- 
DaveA