What do we do when two keys hash to the same slot in our array? Overwriting the element in our array is not an option as this would mean losing records. One common solution to deal with collisions is a technique called chaining. In this solution, the hash table data is stored outside the actual array itself.
The idea behind chaining is that each entry in our hash array has a pointer to its own linked list. Any items we add to our hash table are stored in these linked lists. Initially, every entry in the array is initialized to contain an empty linked list. Whenever we insert a particular array slot in the hash table, we insert it at the head of the linked list associated with that position. In this way, ...
