understanding of hash code

Question

hash function is important in implementing hash table. I know that in java Object has its hash code, which might be generated from weak hash function.

Following is one snippet that is "supplement hash function"

static int hash(Object x) {
    int h = x.hashCode();

    h += ~(h << 9);
    h ^=  (h >>> 14);
    h +=  (h << 4);
    h ^=  (h >>> 10);
    return h;
}

Can anybody help to explain what is the fundamental idea of a hash algorithm ? to generate non-duplicate integer? If so, how does these bitwise operations make it?

Answer 1

What you are usually trying to do with a hash algorithm is convert a large search key into a small nonnegative number, so you can look up an associated record in a table somewhere, and do it more quickly than M log2 N (where M is the cost of a "comparison" and N is the number of items in the "table") typical of a binary search (or tree search).

If you are lucky enough to have a perfect hash, you know that any element of your (known!) key set will be hashed to a unique, different value. Perfect hashes are primarily of interest for things like compilers that need to look up language keywords.

In the real world, you have imperfect hashes, where several keys all hash to the same value. That's OK: you now only have to compare the key to a small set of candidate matches (the ones that hash to that value), rather than a large set (the full table). The small sets are traditionally called "buckets". You use the hash algorithm to select a bucket, then you use some other searchable data structure for the buckets themselves. (If the number of elements in a bucket is known, or safely expected, to be really small, linear search is not unreasonable. Binary search trees are also reasonable.)

The bitwise operations in your example look a lot like a signature analysis shift register, that try to compress a long unique pattern of bits into a short, still-unique pattern.

Answer 2

A hash function is any well-defined procedure or mathematical function that converts a large, possibly variable-sized amount of data into a small datum, usually a single integer that may serve as an index to an array. The values returned by a hash function are called hash values, hash codes, hash sums, checksums or simply hashes. (wikipedia)

Using more "human" language object hash is a short and compact value based on object's properties. That is if you have two objects that vary somehow - you can expect their hash values to be different. Good hash algorithm produces different values for different objects.

Answer 3

That code is attempting to improve the quality of the hash value by mashing the bits around.

The overall effect is that for a given x.hashCode() you hopefully get a better distribution of hash values across the full range of integers. The performance of certain algorithms will improve if you started with a poor hashcode implementation but then improve hash codes in this way.

For example, hashCode() for a humble Integer in Java just returns the integer value. While this is fine for many purposes, in some cases you want a much better hash code, so putting the hashCode through this kind of function would improve it significantly.

Answer 4

Basically, the thing you're trying to achieve with a hash function is to give all bits in the hash code a roughly 50% chance of being off or on given a particular item to be hashed. That way, it doesn't matter how many "buckets" your hash table has (or put another way, how many of the bottom bits you take in order to determine the bucket number)-- if every bit is as random as possible, then an item will always be assigned to an essentially random bucket.

Now, in real life, many people use hash functions that aren't that good. They have some randomness in some of the bits, but not all of them. For example, imagine if you have a hash function whose bits 6-7 are biased-- let's say in the typical hash code of an object, they have a 75% chance of being set. In this made up example, if our hash table has 256 buckets (i.e. the bucket number comes from bits 0-7 of the hash code), then we're throwing away the randomness that does exist in bits 8-31, and a smaller portion of the buckets will tend to get filled (i.e. those whose numbers have bits 6 and 7 set).

The supplementary hash function basically tries to spread whatever randomness there is in the hash codes over a larger number of bits. So in our hypothetical example, the idea would be that some of the randomness from bits 8-31 will get mixed in with the lower bits, and dilute the bias of bits 6-7. It still won't be perfect, but better than before.

Answer 5

If you're generating a hash table, then the main thing you want to get across when writing your hash function is to ensure uniformity, not necessarily to create completely unique values.

For example, if you have a hash table of size 10, you don't want a hash function that returns a hash of 3 over and over. Otherwise, that specific bucket will force a search time of O(n). You want a hash function such that it will return, for example: 1, 9, 4, 6, 8... and ensure that none of your buckets are much heavier than the others.

For your projects, I'd recommend that you use a well-known hashing algorithm such as MD5 or even better, SHA and use the first k bits that you need and discard the rest. These are time-tested functions and as a programmer, you'd be smart to use them.

Answer 6

It could be anything you want as long as you adhere to the general contract described in the doc, which in my own words are:

• If you call 100 ( N ) times hashCode on an object, all the times must return the same value, at least during that program execution( subsequent program execution may return a different one )
• If o1.equals(o2) is true, then o1.hashCode() == o2.hashCode() must be true also
• If o1.equals(o2) is false, then o1.hashCode() == o2.hashCode() may be true, but it helps it is not.

And that's it.

Depending on the nature of your class, the hashCode() e may be very complex or very simple. For instance the String class which may have millions of instances needs a very goo hashCode implementation, and use prime numbers to reduce the poisibility of collisions.

If for your class it does make sense to have a consecutive number, that's ok too, there is no reason why you should complicate it every time.