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The Computer Journal 1978 21(3):210-214; doi:10.1093/comjnl/21.3.210
© 1978 by British Computer Society
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Search times using hash tables for records with non-unique keys

W. B. Samson1 * and R. H. Davis2 §

1 Department of Mathematics and Computer Studies, Dundee College of Technology, Dundee, UK, 2 Computer Science Department, Heriot-Watt University, 79 Grassmarket, Edinburgh, UK

Recent research in hash coding (Knott, 1975; Maurer and Lewis, 1975; Severance, 1974) has concentrated on unique keys, or uniform distribution of keys. This paper is intended to clarify the effect of non-unique keys with various distributions on search times in the hash table thus enabling recommendations to be made to those who must deal with hash tables of this type. It is found that extreme rank-order frequency distribution of keys, such as the Zipf distribution, result in much higher access times than more uniform distributions, but it is possible to reduce these to some extent by loading records with common keys on to the hash table first.

Received December 1976.

* Department of Mathematics and Computer Studies, Dundee College of Technology.

§ Computer Science Department, Heriot-Watt University, 79 Grassmarket, Edinburgh EH1 2HJ.


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