title: What is the most significant byte of 160 bit hash for arithmetic operations?
body: <p>Could somebody help me to understand what is the most significant byte of a 160 bit (SHA-1) hash?</p>
  
  <p>I have a C# code which calls the cryptography library to calculate a hash code from a data stream. In the result I get a 20 byte C# array. Then I calculate another hash code from another data stream and then I need to place the hash codes in ascending order.</p>
  
  <p>Now, I'm trying to understand how to compare them right. Apparently I need to subtract one from another and then check if the result is negative, positive or zero. Technically, I have 2 20 byte arrays, which if we look at from the memory perspective having the least significant byte at the beginning (lower memory address) and the most significant byte at the end (higher memory address). On the other hand looking at them from the human reading perspective the most significant byte is at the beginning and the least significant is at the end and if I'm not mistaken this order is used for comparing GUIDs. Of course, it will give us different order if we use one or another approach. Which way is considered to be the right or conventional one for comparing hash codes? It is especially important in our case because we are thinking about implementing a distributed hash table which should be compatible with existing ones.</p>