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

Performance of Sorting or Searching

One of the chief concerns in searching and sorting is speed. Often, this concern is misguided, because the sort or search takes negligible time compared to the rest of the program. For most sorting and searching applications, you should use the easiest method available . If you later find that the program is too slow because of the searching or sorting algorithm used, you can substitute another method easily. By starting with a simple method, you haven’t invested much time and effort on code that has to be replaced.

One measure of the speed of a sorting or searching algorithm is the number of operations that must be performed in the best, average,