Encoding Password

[Anon]

What's the best way to encode a password from a form? How do professional web progrmmers do it? Right now I just save it as a varchar field.

[Anon]

You can use function crypt(). Look
up section "XCV - String Functions"
of the php manual.
But beware that this function does
not produce the same encrypted strings
on different operating systems. So your
program/data will not be portable.

Have a look at function md5() as well,
in the same section of the manual.
This function is portable, as far as
I know.

Hope this helps.

[Anon]

is there a way to decrypt the md5?

what do you do about password lookup?

[Anon]

No, crypt and md5 are one-way encryption.
But nevertheless you can authenticate
passwords. See the php for examples.