如何在不使用文本字段的情况下在MySQL数据库中存储哈希值

Question

I'm storing unique user-agents in a MySQL MyISAM table so when I have to look if it exists in the table, I check the md5 hash that is stored next to the TEXT field.

User-Agents 
{
    id         - INT
    user-agent - TEXT
    hash       - VARCHAR(32) // md5
}

There is any way to do the same but using a 32-bit integer and not a text hash? Maybe the md5 in raw format will be faster? That will requiere a binary search.

[EDIT]

MySQL don't handle hash searches for complete case-sensitive strings?

Answer 1

Let MySQL do the hard work for you. Use a CHAR column and create an index on that column. You could convert and store the hash as an integer, but there's absolutely no benefit, and it may actually cause problems.