I'm just curious because I guess it will have impact on performance. Does it consider the full string? If yes, it will be slow on long string. If it only consider part of the string, it will have bad performance (e.g. if it only consider the beginning of the string, it will have bad performance if a HashSet contains mostly strings with the same.
Be sure to obtain the Reference Source source code when you have questions like this. There's a lot more to it than what you can see from a decompiler. Pick the one that matches your preferred .NET target, the method has changed a great deal between versions. I'll just reproduce the .NET 4.5 version of it here, retrieved from Source.NET 4.5\4.6.0.0\net\clr\src\BCL\System\String.cs\604718\String.cs
public override int GetHashCode() {
#if FEATURE_RANDOMIZED_STRING_HASHING
if(HashHelpers.s_UseRandomizedStringHashing)
{
return InternalMarvin32HashString(this, this.Length, 0);
}
#endif // FEATURE_RANDOMIZED_STRING_HASHING
unsafe {
fixed (char *src = this) {
Contract.Assert(src[this.Length] == '\0', "src[this.Length] == '\\0'");
Contract.Assert( ((int)src)%4 == 0, "Managed string should start at 4 bytes boundary");
#if WIN32
int hash1 = (5381<<16) + 5381;
#else
int hash1 = 5381;
#endif
int hash2 = hash1;
#if WIN32
// 32 bit machines.
int* pint = (int *)src;
int len = this.Length;
while (len > 2)
{
hash1 = ((hash1 << 5) + hash1 + (hash1 >> 27)) ^ pint[0];
hash2 = ((hash2 << 5) + hash2 + (hash2 >> 27)) ^ pint[1];
pint += 2;
len -= 4;
}
if (len > 0)
{
hash1 = ((hash1 << 5) + hash1 + (hash1 >> 27)) ^ pint[0];
}
#else
int c;
char *s = src;
while ((c = s[0]) != 0) {
hash1 = ((hash1 << 5) + hash1) ^ c;
c = s[1];
if (c == 0)
break;
hash2 = ((hash2 << 5) + hash2) ^ c;
s += 2;
}
#endif
#if DEBUG
// We want to ensure we can change our hash function daily.
// This is perfectly fine as long as you don't persist the
// value from GetHashCode to disk or count on String A
// hashing before string B. Those are bugs in your code.
hash1 ^= ThisAssembly.DailyBuildNumber;
#endif
return hash1 + (hash2 * 1566083941);
}
}
}
This is possibly more than you bargained for, I'll annotate the code a bit: