hashing strings to integers for sqlite3 keys

[Adam Funk]

I'm using Python 3.3 and the sqlite3 module in the standard library.
I'm processing a lot of strings from input files (among other things,
values of headers in e-mail & news messages) and suppressing
duplicates using a table of seen strings in the database.

It seems to me --- from past experience with other things, where
testing integers for equality is faster than testing strings, as well
as from reading the SQLite3 documentation about INTEGER PRIMARY KEY
--- that the SELECT tests should be faster if I am looking up an
INTEGER PRIMARY KEY value rather than TEXT PRIMARY KEY.  Is that
right?

If so, what sort of hashing function should I use?  The "maxint" for
SQLite3 is a lot smaller than the size of even MD5 hashes.  The only
thing I've thought of so far is to use MD5 or SHA-something modulo the
maxint value.  (Security isn't an issue --- i.e., I'm not worried
about someone trying to create a hash collision.)

Thanks,
Adam


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