What's the best hashing algorithm to use on a stl string when using hash_map?

Question

I\'ve found the standard hashing function on VS2005 is painfully slow when trying to achieve high performance look ups. What are some good examples of fast and efficient has

Answer 1

From some old code of mine:

/* magic numbers from http://www.isthe.com/chongo/tech/comp/fnv/ */
static const size_t InitialFNV = 2166136261U;
static const size_t FNVMultiple = 16777619;

/* Fowler / Noll / Vo (FNV) Hash */
size_t myhash(const string &s)
{
    size_t hash = InitialFNV;
    for(size_t i = 0; i < s.length(); i++)
    {
        hash = hash ^ (s[i]);       /* xor  the low 8 bits */
        hash = hash * FNVMultiple;  /* multiply by the magic number */
    }
    return hash;
}

Its fast. Really freaking fast.