Go by Example: SHA256 Hashes

SHA256 hashes are frequently used to compute short identities for binary or text blobs. For example, TLS/SSL certificates use SHA256 to compute a certificate’s signature. Here’s how to compute SHA256 hashes in Go.
	`package main`
Go implements several hash functions in various `crypto/*` packages.	`import ( "crypto/sha256" "fmt" )`
	`func main() { s := "sha256 this string"`
Here we start with a new hash.	`h := sha256.New()`
`Write` expects bytes. If you have a string `s`, use `[]byte(s)` to coerce it to bytes.	`h.Write([]byte(s))`
This gets the finalized hash result as a byte slice. The argument to `Sum` can be used to append to an existing byte slice: it usually isn’t needed.	`bs := h.Sum(nil)`
	`fmt.Println(s) fmt.Printf("%x\n", bs) }`

Running the program computes the hash and prints it in a human-readable hex format.	`$ go run sha256-hashes.go sha256 this string 1af1dfa857bf1d8814fe1af8983c18080019922e557f15a8a...`
You can compute other hashes using a similar pattern to the one shown above. For example, to compute SHA512 hashes import `crypto/sha512` and use `sha512.New()`.
Note that if you need cryptographically secure hashes, you should carefully research hash strength!