# Introduction

These functions are intended to work with » mhash. Mhash can be used to create checksums, message digests, message authentication codes, and more.

This is an interface to the mhash library. Mhash supports a wide variety of hash algorithms such as MD5, SHA1, GOST, and many others. For a complete list of supported hashes, refer to the constants page. The general rule is that you can access the hash algorithm from PHP with `MHASH_hashname`. For example, to access TIGER you use the PHP constant `MHASH_TIGER`.

> Note:

> This extension is obsoleted by Hash.

> Note:

> As of PHP 7.0.0 the Mhash extension has been fully integrated into the Hash extension. Therefore, it is no longer possible to detect Mhash support with extension_loaded(); use function_exists() instead. Furthermore, Mhash is no longer reported by get_loaded_extensions() and related features.