I have to write my own hash function. If I wanted to just make the simple hash function that maps each letter in the string to a numerical value (i.e. a=1, b=2, c=3, ...), is there a way I can perform this hash on a string without having to first convert it to a c-string to look at each individual char? Is there a more efficient way of hashing strings?
From personal experience I know that this works and produces good distributions. (Plagiarised from http://www.cse.yorku.ca/~oz/hash.html):
djb2
this algorithm (k=33) was first reported by dan bernstein many years ago in comp.lang.c. another version of this algorithm (now favored by bernstein) uses xor: hash(i) = hash(i - 1) * 33 ^ str[i]; the magic of number 33 (why it works better than many other constants, prime or not) has never been adequately explained.
unsigned long hash(unsigned char *str) {
unsigned long hash = 5381;
int c;
while (c = *str++) {
hash = ((hash << 5) + hash) + c; /* hash * 33 + c */
}
return hash;
}