Hashing code explanation?

[XaiZou]

Can anyone please explane the code below with comments ?

what are `pbegin` & `pend` ?

what is ( i believe it is data, where it comes from ? ): `(pbegin == pend ? pblank : static_cast<const void*>(&pbegin[0]))`

What is (i believe it is the size of data 80 ?) : `(pend - pbegin) * sizeof(pbegin[0])`

what is : `pblank[1]`

    template<typename T1>
    inline uint256 HashShabal(const T1 pbegin, const T1 pend)
    {   
        sph_shabal256_context ctx_shabal;
        static unsigned char pblank[1];
        uint256 hash[1];
        sph_shabal256_init(&ctx_shabal);
        // ZSHABAL;
        sph_shabal256 (&ctx_shabal, (pbegin == pend ? pblank : static_cast<const void*>(&pbegin[0])), (pend - pbegin) * sizeof(pbegin[0]));
        sph_shabal256_close(&ctx_shabal, static_cast<void*>(&hash[0]));
   
        return hash[0];
    }

[hhanh00]

pbegin is a pointer to the beginning of the data, pend is a pointer to the element *just after* the end of the array.
Therefore, *pbegin is the first element but *pend is invalid since it is past your array.
However, defining pend this way simplifies many formulas. For instance, (pend-pbegin) is the number of elements of your array. (pend-pbegin)*sizeof(T) is the size of your array in bytes. sizeof(T) == sizeof(&pbegin[0]) but sizeof(T) is more readable.

if (pend==pbegin), the array is empty. The code handles this boundary case specially by passing pblank instead of pbegin, possibly because sph_shabal256(p) evaluates *p which in this case is *pend and then could crash.
However, it is a bug of sph_shabal256 to do so. The caller passes a dummy array of one byte to make it happy.

[XaiZou]

Thanks, also what does this mean and what are the difference , second one is scrypt, what thash is ?? why second one is BEGIN-BEGIN not BEGIN-END ?

Code:

 uint256 GetPoWHash() const
    {
	return Hash(BEGIN(nVersion), END(nNonce));
    }

Code:

 uint256 GetPoWHash() const
    {
       uint256 thash;
       scrypt_1024_1_1_256(BEGIN(nVersion), BEGIN(thash));
       return thash;

    }

[hhanh00]

Hash(pbegin, pend) computes the hash between [pbegin, pend) and returns the value
but scrypt(pbegin, presult) hashes starting from pbegin and returns the result in presult. The length of the data is probably hard coded.

[wanghaoqd]

Hash(pbegin, pend) computes the hash between [pbegin, pend) and returns the value
but scrypt(pbegin, presult) hashes starting from pbegin and returns the result in presult. The length of the data is probably hard coded.

Thanks for the explanation!