Random seed a String ?

Newbie & Debugging Questions
#1

Looking at the java Random class it supports a long as a seed
minecraft for example has a string seed

without writing it yourself obviously, what would I use if I want a string as a seed ?

edit: or to ask differently: how is this done usually ?
like every character casted to int, and then, added or whatever ?

#2

I think I remember him saying that he just takes the toByteArray() and does something with it. Or even just .hashCode() ?

#3 

String strSeed = "yessir";
long seed = 0;
for (int i=0;i<strSeed.length();i++)
{
      seed+=(int)strSeed.charAt(i);
}	
Random random = new Random(seed);

of course this works, but many collisions, as “yessir” and “siryes” will obviously yield the same result (not really sure if thats a problem in my case)

hashCode() huh ?

#4

Yeah: just using the default hashCode result as the seed is good enough for gaming purposes.

#5

well hashcode is the hashcode of the OBJECT

so it seems “blah”.hashCode() always returns the same thing - if thats true, well then good, although I dont get it
because


"blah".hashCode();
"blah".hashCode();

2 lines of code, 2 strings, 2 different objects, right ? They just happen to have the same string value.

#6

That’s because String overrides hashCode() to return the hash of the String.

#7

alright then

#8

Apart from the fact that you actually have one object there due to string interning, if you expect “blah”.equals(“blah”) to return true then either you expect “blah”.hashCode() == “blah”.hashCode() to return true or you expect HashMap to break badly when strings are used as keys.

#9

as pjt33 said when you do it like this you have only one object, because string constants get cached.
try new String(“blah”)