[GAP Forum] Is CrcString deterministic?

[Dima Pasechnik]

On Sat, Sep 12, 2015 at 02:58:47PM -0400, Will Chen wrote:
> CrcString reads any input string and returns an integer to be thought of as
> a "checksum".
> 
> Is the method deterministic? Ie, if I type in, say
> 
> CrcString("12jksma9-3oxz381sADd3");
> 
> on two different computers running different versions of gap, will
> CrcString give the same output?
> 
> Of course it's possible that even if CrcString is deterministic, then the
> implementation for CrcString may have changed over the years, which leads
> to another question - when was the last time the implementation of
> CrcString could have changed?
I don't know. Read the source?
> 
> A related question is - are the commands for constructing finite simple
> groups (and other families of common groups) deterministic?
> 
> For example, when I type in PSU(n,q) or PSL(n,q) or AlternatingGroup(n),
> GAP seems to represent them as permutation groups. Is the representation of
> these common groups as permutation groups deterministic? When I type in
> PSU(...) or PSL(...), will I always get the same permutation group?
yes, these are deterministic.

HTH,
Dima