Question

Can someone tell me what are the maximum and minimum int values that the Java String.hashCode() method can return?

Answer 1

String.hashCode() returns an int calculated by using the below formula:

public int hashCode()

Returns a hash code for this string.

The hash code for a String object is computed as

s[0]*31^(n-1) + s[1]*31^(n-2) + ... + s[n-1]

using int arithmetic, where s[i] is the i-th character of the string, n is the length of the string, and ^ indicates
exponentiation. (The hash value of the empty string is zero.)

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The minimum and max value can be found with the below constants.

 System.out.println(java.lang.Integer.MAX_VALUE); //  2147483647
 System.out.println(java.lang.Integer.MIN_VALUE); // -2147483648