Have a good hash function for a C++ hash table?

Question

I am in need of a performance-oriented hash function implementation in C++ for a hash table that I will be coding. I looked around already and only found questions asking wh

Answer 1

This simple polynomial works surprisingly well. I got it from Paul Larson of Microsoft Research who studied a wide variety of hash functions and hash multipliers.

unsigned hash(const char* s, unsigned salt)
{
    unsigned h = salt;
    while (*s)
        h = h * 101 + (unsigned) *s++;
    return h;
}

salt should be initialized to some randomly chosen value before the hashtable is created to defend against hash table attacks. If this isn't an issue for you, just use 0.

The size of the table is important too, to minimize collisions. Sounds like yours is fine.