On my HAVAL implementation

[paulo.barreto@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Paulo Barreto)]

Greetings.

I've been informed that some people are having trouble to use my public
domain implementation of the HAVAL hashing function.

I'd like to point out that:

1. Though my implementation is indeed public domain, the very algorithm is
*not*, as Dr. Yuliang Zheng clearly states in his HAVAL page.  However,
he's very liberal in conceding "licenses" (in fact, absolutely no fee is
due; Dr. Zheng only wants to keep track of where HAVAL is being used).

2. When compiling on Intel machines, it is necessary to #define
LITTLE_ENDIAN, or else -DLITTLE_ENDIAN for the code to behave properly.  A
new release is due to be soon available online that automatically does that
on some known platforms.  Please check
<http://www.nw.com.br/users/pbarreto/crypto_page.html> in a few days (a
week at most; I'm still waiting for some feedback from some  contributors).

3. I was not able to test the code on George Barwood's page on big-endian
machines (nor under Borland C++ compiler).  I have recently received bug
reports and corrections from Mr. Tines; these have been merged into the new
release, which seems to be OK on those platforms.

If anyone needs the corrected implementation right now, I'll gladly post it
by e-mail.  For reference, I can be reached at <pbarreto@xxxxxxxxx>, at
<paulo.barreto@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, and at <paulo_barreto@xxxxxxxxxxx>, but no
longer at <paulobarreto@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Finally (and for completeness), I'd like to point out that a Java
implementation of HAVAL is available as part of the Cryptix cryptographic
library (together with a whole lot of other cryptographic algorithms).

Cheers,

Paulo Barreto.