Does the SHA hash function always generate a fixed length hash? I'm using the SHA1/2 family of algorithms for a particular project. I was wondering if all the SHA algorithms return a fixed length hash regardless of the length of the data.
Yes. By the definition in FIPS 180-4, there are exactly
160 bits in the output of SHA-1
224 bits in the output of SHA-224
256 bits in the output of SHA-256
384 bits in the output of SHA-384
512 bits in the output of SHA-512
224 bits in the output of SHA-512/224
256 bits in the output of SHA-512/256