Grokking Algorithms

Chapter 5. Hash Tables

In this chapter

• You learn about hash tables, one of the most useful basic data structures. Hash tables have many uses; this chapter covers the common use cases.
• You learn about the internals of hash tables: implementation, collisions, and hash functions. This will help you understand how to analyze a hash table’s performance.

Suppose you work at a grocery store. When a customer buys produce, you have to look up the price in a book. If the book is unalphabetized, it can take you a long time to look through every single line for apple. You’d be doing simple search from chapter 1, where you have to look at every line. Do ...