Hash

When to use hash

function in programming.

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A hash function takes an input as a key, which is associated with a datum or record and used to identify it to the data storage and retrieval application. The keys may be fixed length, like an integer, or variable length, like a name. In some cases, the key is the datum itself. The output is a hash code used to index a hash table holding the data or records, or pointers to them.

A hash function may be considered to perform three functions:

• Convert variable length keys into fixed length (usually machine word length or less) values, by folding them by words or other units using a parity-preserving operator like ADD or XOR.
• Scramble the bits of the key so that the resulting values are uniformly distributed over the key space.
• Map the key values into ones less than or equal to the size of the table

A good hash function satisfies two basic properties: 1) it should be very fast to compute; 2) it should minimize duplication of output values (collisions). Hash functions rely on generating favorable probability distributions for their effectiveness, reducing access time to nearly constant. High table loading factors, pathological key sets and poorly designed hash functions can result in access times approaching linear in…