What is the best Encryption / Hashing?

[Dorayaki]

Hello,
What is the best hashing for password and what is the best encryption for credit card (of course we will need to decrypt it later) ?

Also I would like to know, how did people usually generate salt ? I always heard about md5+salt but how did they usually generate it ?

Also SHA256, anyone have the sample?

Many Thank !

[Stefano Mtangoo]

First RTM because there are discussions under each function. Wikipedia give an idea of salting and this tutorial may help you

[cwarn23]

The following function is fool proof and fully past, current and future attack resistant.

function truehash($input) {
return hash('sha1',substr(hash('sha1',$input),4,-4));
}