On May 10, 2005, at 5:30 PM, Clifford Heath wrote:
> Don't forget that in many hashing algorithms, the cost of computing
> the hash function far outweighs the occasional cost of traversing a
> chain.

That's not something I knew, so it's hard to unforget it. Thanks :)

I *think* that the proposed application within my company is a one- 
time optimization. (Hash the nice human/programmer-readable strings  
and from then on store and use the results only as shorts.)

I have a BS comp-sci degree, but apparently I need to go back to  
school and learn myself some in-depth algorithm and data structure  
stuff.

Thanks also for the note about "linear hashing". Looks interesting.