Hash function for a string

Question

We are currently dealing with hash function in my class. Our instructor asked us to a hash function on the internet to compare to the two we have used in our code.

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Answer 1

Java's String implements hashCode like this:

public int hashCode()

Returns a hash code for this string. The hash code for a String object is computed as

     s[0]*31^(n-1) + s[1]*31^(n-2) + ... + s[n-1]

using int arithmetic, where s[i] is the ith character of the string, n is the length of the string, and ^ indicates exponentiation. (The hash value of the empty string is zero.) 

So something like this:

int HashTable::hash (string word) {
    int result = 0;
    for(size_t i = 0; i < word.length(); ++i) {
        result += word[i] * pow(31, i);
    }
    return result;
}