My understanding is that both a fingerprint and a hash are functions that take as input some arbitrarily long bitstring, and output a bitstring of a fixed size. The Wikipedia page for Hash Functions says:
Hash functions are related to (and often confused with) … fingerprints
But try as I may, I can't find any sources that mention the difference between the two. Do you know what the difference between a hash function and a fingerprinting function is?
Best Answer
It is my understanding that cryptographic hash functions need to be resistant to reversing. I.e. One should not be able to calculate possible messages from a hash value. If this were not the case, hashing passwords wouldn't be (as) secure.
Fingerprint functions, on the other hand, are fine even if you can calculate possible messages from a fingerprint. They just need to identify a file/object.