Explain “Chaining for handling collisions” in detail
Explain “Chaining for handling collisions” in detail
Hash Table Chaining.
Chaining is a technique used in Hash Tables to handle collisions. A Hash Table is a data structure that stores key-value pairs, where each key is mapped to a unique index in the table. In order to map keys to their respective indices, a hash function is used. However, it is possible for two or more keys to be mapped to the same index, which is known as a collision.
Chaining is one way to resolve collisions in Hash Tables. In chaining, instead of storing a single value at each index in the Hash Table, we store a linked list of values. When a collision occurs, we simply add the new key-value pair to the end of the linked list at the corresponding index. This way, multiple key-value pairs can be stored at the same index in the Hash Table, and we can retrieve them by traversing the linked list.
Here is an example to illustrate how chaining works:
Suppose we have a Hash Table with 10 indices, and we want to insert the following key-value pairs:
Key: "apple", Value: 10
Key: "banana", Value: 20
Key: "cherry", Value: 30
Key: "date", Value: 40
Key: "eggplant", Value: 50
We use a hash function to map each key to an index in the Hash Table. For example, let's say our hash function is the length of the key modulo the number of indices in the table (i.e., the remainder when the length of the key is divided by 10). Then, we would get the following indices for each key:
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