seems to me that this function does the same as the hash_equals() function. hash_equals() has nothing to do with hashes really, it is just a constant-time string equality check function, apparently like sodium_memcmp()
(PHP 7 >= 7.2.0, PHP 8)
sodium_memcmp — Test for equality in constant-time
$string1, string $string2): intCompare two strings in constant-time.
In practice, you almost always want to use hash_equals() instead, since it provides the same logic but returns a bool instead of an int. However, if you're using the return value of a comparison in a calculation that's timing-sensitive, and worried about timing leaks with bool-to-int conversions, sodium_memcmp() is an ideal replacement.
string1String to compare
string2Other string to compare
Returns 0 if both strings are equal; -1 otherwise.
seems to me that this function does the same as the hash_equals() function. hash_equals() has nothing to do with hashes really, it is just a constant-time string equality check function, apparently like sodium_memcmp()