Question

I want to implement a Hash function that takes a generic and generates a hash. The function will work at bit level, moving bits and stuff like that.

How can I do it? I thought about using an array of bytes, but how do I convert a generic argument to an array of bytes? Is there a better approach?

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

No, there’s no way to treat an arbitrary object as a byte array in Java. That ability would cut a huge whole in the entire concept of type safety and even code safety, as it would allow arbitrary manipulatons of objects even outside the specification of their types.

You can convert a limited subset of objects to a byte stream using serialization, but the classes would have to support that (basically by implementing Serializable).