Md5

[Frans C]

The MD5 hash should be 128 bits long.

From the w3c website :

The MD5 algorithm takes as input a message of arbitrary length and produces as output a 128-bit "fingerprint" or "message digest" of the input. It is conjectured that it is computationally infeasible to produce two messages having the same message digest, or to produce any message having a given prespecified target message digest. The MD5 algorithm is intended for digital signature applications, where a large file must be "compressed" in a secure manner before being encrypted with a private (secret) key under a public-key cryptosystem such as RSA or PGP.

I tested it with the procedure below, and the ComputeHash method always returns an array with 16 elements, so it always returns a 128 bit value.
I couldn't find anywhere that the result of an MD5 hash must be numeric.

Private Sub Button1_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Button1.Click
        Dim md5c As New System.Security.Cryptography.MD5CryptoServiceProvider()
        Dim asc As New System.Text.ASCIIEncoding()
        Dim sTest As String = Me.TextBox1.Text
        Dim bBuff() As Byte = asc.GetBytes(sTest)
        Dim bHash() As Byte = md5c.ComputeHash(bBuff)
        Dim sHash As String = asc.GetString(bHash)
        MsgBox((bHash.GetUpperBound(0) + 1).ToString)
        Me.Label1.Text = sHash
    End Sub