Limiting Python input strings to certain characters and lengths

I just started learning my first real programming language, Python. I’d like to know how to constrain user input in a raw_input to certain characters and to a certain length. For example, I’d like to show an error message if the user inputs a string that contains anything except the letters a-z, and I’d like to show one of the user inputs more than 15 characters.

Reversible hash function?

I need a reversible hash function (obviously the input will be much smaller in size than the output) that maps the input to the output in a random-looking way. Basically, I want a way to transform a number like “123” to a larger number like “9874362483910978”, but not in a way that will preserve comparisons, so it must not be always true that, if x1 > x2, f(x1) > f(x2) (but neither must it be always false).