Reducing the retrieval time of scatter storage techniques

13. R. P. Brent, Reducing the retrieval time of scatter storage techniques, Communications of the ACM 16 (1973), 105-109.

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Paper: pdf (407K).

Abstract

A new method for entering and retrieving information in a hash table is described. The method is intended to be efficient if most entries are looked up several times. The expected number of probes to look up an entry, predicted theoretically and verified by Monte Carlo experiments, is considerably less than for other comparable methods if the table is nearly full. An example of a possible Fortran implementation is given.

Erratum

A left parenthesis is missing in the caption to Figure 3.

Comments

The algorithm is described in Knuth, Volume 3, Sorting and Searching.

There is a comment, by Feldman and Low, and a reply, in Communications of the ACM 16 (1973), 703.
For further comments see [63].

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