How does a hash table work?

Posted by Arec Barrwin on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Arec Barrwin
Published on 2009-04-08T15:48:59Z Indexed on 2010/05/15 1:54 UTC
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hashtable

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hashing

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data-structures

I'm looking for an explanation of how a hashtable works - in plain English for a simpleton like me! For example I know it takes the key, calculates the hash (how?) and then performs some kind of modulo to work out where it lies in the array that the value is stored, but that's where my knowledge stops.

Could anyone clarify the process.

Edit: I'm not looking specifically about how hashcodes are calculated, but a general overview of how a hashtable works.

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