What is a sensible prime for hashcode calculation?

Question

Eclipse 3.5 has a very nice feature to generate Java hashCode() functions. It would generate for example (slightly shortened:)

class HashTest {
    int i;
           


        

Answer 1

Actually, if you take a prime so large that it comes close to INT_MAX, you have the same problem because of modulo arithmetic. If you expect to hash mostly strings of length 2, perhaps a prime near the square root of INT_MAX would be best, if the strings you hash are longer it doesn't matter so much and collisions are unavoidable anyway...