What is hashing?

To hash means to grind up, and that’s essentially what hashing is all about. The heart of a hashing algorithm is a hash function that takes your nice, neat data and grinds it into some random-looking integer.

The idea behind hashing is that some data either has no inherent ordering (such as images) or is expensive to compare (such as images). If the data has no inherent ordering, you can’t perform comparison searches. If the data is expensive to compare, the

Searching - Brief Idea

Searching algorithms have been studied nearly as much as sorting algorithms. The two are related in that many searching algorithms rely on the ordering of the data being searched. There are four basic kinds of searching algorithms:

• Sequential searching


• Comparison searching


• Radix searching


• Hashing

Each of these methods can be described using the same deck of cards example that was used for sorting.

In sequential searching, you go through the deck from top to bottom, looking at each card until you find the card you are looking for.

In comparison searching (also called binary searching), you start with