Benchmark: SHA1 vs MD5: SHA1 is about 1.4 x slower

sha1_vs_md5.rb

require 'rubygems'
require 'rbench'
require 'digest/md5'
require 'digest/sha1'

MD5 = Digest::MD5
SHA1 = Digest::SHA1
TIMES = 100

short_string = 'this is a short string'
long_string =  short_string * 250


RBench.run(TIMES) do
  column :sha1
  column :md5
  column :diff, :title => 'SHA1 / MD5', :compare => [:sha1, :md5]

  report 'Short String' do
    sha1 { 5000.times { SHA1.hexdigest(short_string) } }
    md5  { 5000.times { MD5.hexdigest(short_string) } }
  end

  report 'Long String' do
    sha1 { 5000.times { SHA1.hexdigest(long_string) } }
    md5  { 5000.times { MD5.hexdigest(long_string) } }
  end
end


# Something to keep in mind
# MD5#hexdigest returns 32 characters
# SHA1#hexdigest returns 40 characters

#                         SHA1 |     MD5 | SHA1 / MD5 |
# -----------------------------------------------------
# Short String           1.638 |   1.626 |      1.01x |
# Long String           10.688 |   7.839 |      1.36x |