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Cuckoo Hashing

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  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Algorithms

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Years and Authors of Summarized Original Work

Problem Definition

A dictionary (also known as an associative array) is an abstract data structure capable of storing a set S of elements, referred to as keys, and information associated with each key. The operations supported by a dictionary are insertion of a key (and associated information), deletion of a key, and lookup of a key (retrieving the associated information). In case a lookup is made on a key that is not in S, this must be reported by the data structure.

The hash table is a class of data structures use to implement dictionaries in the RAM model of computation. Open addressing hash tables are a particularly simple type of hash table, where the data structure is an array such that each entry either contains a key of S or is marked “empty.” Cuckoo hashing addresses the problem of implementing an open addressing hash table with worst-caseconstant lookup time. Specifically, a constant number of entries in the hash table should be...

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Recommended Reading

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Theoretical Computer Science, IT University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Rasmus Pagh

Authors
  1. Rasmus Pagh
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rasmus Pagh .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Ming-Yang Kao

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Pagh, R. (2016). Cuckoo Hashing. In: Kao, MY. (eds) Encyclopedia of Algorithms. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2864-4_97

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