computing the hashcode of lua objects in a program

[Marcus Mason <m4gicks@...>]

Hello list, I need a way to compute a hash code of a lua object. Other languages like java / c# provide a method like GetHashCode() to do this, and I was wondering if it would be possible to write a function like this for lua using the internal hashing mechanism (as a C library I can require). If not is there a way to implement something that provides similar semantics in pure lua?