row key for string

[Ruby Stevenson]

hi all

I am reading some code related to encoding a string representing the
file path into a row key, it essentially went through a series of
transformation like this:

        String filepath = "/x/y/z";
        ByteBuffer bb = ByteBufferUtil.bytes(filepath);
        String s = FBUtilities.hashToBigInteger(bb).toString(16);
        return ByteBufferUtil.bytes(s);

why hashToBigInteger and then hex string? is this a convention/idiom
of generating row key this way?

thanks

Ruby