Hash function for floats

Question

I\'m currently implementing a hash table in C++ and I\'m trying to make a hash function for floats...

I was going to treat floats as integers by padding the decimal

Answer 1

If your hash function did the following you'd get some degree of fuzziness on the hash lookup

unsigned int Hash( float f )
{
    unsigned int ui;
    memcpy( &ui, &f, sizeof( float ) );
    return ui & 0xfffff000;
}

This way you'll mask off the 12 least significant bits allowing for a degree of uncertainty ... It really depends on yout application however.