How to hash std::string?

For a quick solution involving no external libraries, you can use hash<std::string> to hash strings. It’s defined by including the header files hash_map or unordered_map (or some others too).

#include <string>
#include <unordered_map>

hash<string> hasher;

string s = "heyho";

size_t hash = hasher(s);

If you decide you want the added security of SHA, you don’t have to download the large Crypto++ library if you don’t need all its other features; there are plenty of standalone implementations on the internet, just search for “sha implementation c++”.