Hashing a Tree Structure

Question

I\'ve just come across a scenario in my project where it I need to compare different tree objects for equality with already known instances, and have considered that some so

Answer 1

Writing your own hash function is almost always a bug, because you basically need a degree in mathematics to do it well. Hashfunctions are incredibly nonintuitive, and have highly unpredictable collision characteristics.

Don't try directly combining hashcodes for Child nodes -- this will magnify any problems in the underlying hash functions. Instead, concatenate the raw bytes from each node in order, and feed this as a byte stream to a tried-and-true hash function. All the cryptographic hash functions can accept a byte stream. If the tree is small, you may want to just create a byte array and hash it in one operation.