--- a/mercurial/revlog.py	Tue May 17 10:13:00 2005 -0800
+++ b/mercurial/revlog.py	Tue May 17 11:06:59 2005 -0800
@@ -13,6 +13,7 @@
 
 def hex(node): return binascii.hexlify(node)
 def bin(node): return binascii.unhexlify(node)
+def short(node): return hex(node[:4])
 
 def compress(text):
     return zlib.compress(text)