Question

To my surprise the folowing method produces a different result in debug vs release:

int result = "test".GetHashCode();

Is there any way to avoid this?

I need a reliable way to hash a string and I need the value to be consistent in debug and release mode. I would like to avoid writing my own hashing function if possible.

Why does this happen?

FYI, reflector gives me:

[ReliabilityContract(Consistency.WillNotCorruptState, Cer.MayFail), SecuritySafeCritical]
public override unsafe int GetHashCode()
{
    fixed (char* str = ((char*) this))
    {
        char* chPtr = str;
        int num = 0x15051505;
        int num2 = num;
        int* numPtr = (int*) chPtr;
        for (int i = this.Length; i > 0; i -= 4)
        {
            num = (((num << 5) + num) + (num >> 0x1b)) ^ numPtr[0];
            if (i <= 2)
            {
                break;
            }
            num2 = (((num2 << 5) + num2) + (num2 >> 0x1b)) ^ numPtr[1];
            numPtr += 2;
        }
        return (num + (num2 * 0x5d588b65));
    }
}

Answer 1

GetHashCode() is not what you should be using to hash a string, almost 100% of the time. Without knowing what you’re doing, I recommend that you use an actual hash algorithm, like SHA-1:

using(System.Security.Cryptography.SHA1Managed hp = new System.Security.Cryptography.SHA1Managed()) {
    // Use hp.ComputeHash(System.Text.Encoding.ASCII (or Unicode, UTF8, UTF16, or UTF32 or something...).GetBytes(theString) to compute the hash code.
}

Update: For something a little bit faster, there’s also SHA1Cng, which is significantly faster than SHA1Managed.