How does a hash table work?

Question

I\'m looking for an explanation of how a hash table works - in plain English for a simpleton like me!

For example, I know it takes the key, calculates the hash (I a

Answer 1

It's even simpler than that.

A hashtable is nothing more than an array (usually sparse one) of vectors which contain key/value pairs. The maximum size of this array is typically smaller than the number of items in the set of possible values for the type of data being stored in the hashtable.

The hash algorithm is used to generate an index into that array based on the values of the item that will be stored in the array.

This is where storing vectors of key/value pairs in the array come in. Because the set of values that can be indexes in the array is typically smaller than the number of all possible values that the type can have, it is possible that your hash algorithm is going to generate the same value for two separate keys. A good hash algorithm will prevent this as much as possible (which is why it is relegated to the type usually because it has specific information which a general hash algorithm can't possibly know), but it's impossible to prevent.

Because of this, you can have multiple keys that will generate the same hash code. When that happens, the items in the vector are iterated through, and a direct comparison is done between the key in the vector and the key that is being looked up. If it is found, great and the value associated with the key is returned, otherwise, nothing is returned.