On Tue, Aug 02, 2005 at 05:22:54PM -0400, Ed Watkeys wrote:
Yup. But you really should use prime numbers for hash tables.
Is there a paper or book that offers a convincing, empirical argument
for this? I've read and heard this exhortation before but the
justification in the presence well designed hash and rehash functions
has always been "just to be safe."
Maybe the blurb about it here
http://www.concentric.net/~Ttwang/tech/primehash.htm
will help. Read the "Expandable Hash Table" section and the first
paragraph
of the next section.