title: Is there a significant overhead by using different versions of sha hashing (hashlib module)
body: <p>The <a href="http://docs.python.org/library/hashlib.html" rel="noreferrer"><code>hashlib</code></a> Python module provides the following hash algorithms constructors: <code>md5()</code>, <code>sha1()</code>, <code>sha224()</code>, <code>sha256()</code>, <code>sha384()</code>, and <code>sha512()</code>.</p>
  
  <p>Assuming I don't want to use md5, is there a big difference in using, say, sha1 instead of sha512? I want to use something like <code>hashlib.shaXXX(hashString).hexdigest()</code>, but as it's just for caching, I'm not sure I need the (eventual) extra overhead of 512...</p>
  
  <p>Does this overhead exist, and if so, how big is it?</p>