Question

I was wondering how to calculate the hash code for a given string by hand. I understand that in Java, you can do something like:

String me = "What you say what you say what?";  
long whatever = me.hashCode();

That’s all good and dandy, but I was wondering how to do it by hand. I know the given formula for calculating the hash code of a string is something like:

S0 X 31 ^ (n-1) + S1 X 31 ^ (n-2) + .... + S(n-2) X 31 + S(n-1)  

Where S indicates the character in the string, and n is the length of the string. Using 16 bit unicode then, the first character from string me would be computed as:

87 X (31 ^ 34)

However, that creates an insanely large number. I can’t imagine adding all the characters together like that. So, in order to calculate the lowest-order 32 bits result then, what would I do? Long whatever from above equals -957986661 and I’m not how to calculate that?

Answer 1

Take a look at the source code of java.lang.String.

/**
 * Returns a hash code for this string. The hash code for a
 * <code>String</code> object is computed as
 * <blockquote><pre>
 * s[0]*31^(n-1) + s[1]*31^(n-2) + ... + s[n-1]
 * </pre></blockquote>
 * using <code>int</code> arithmetic, where <code>s[i]</code> is the
 * <i>i</i>th character of the string, <code>n</code> is the length of
 * the string, and <code>^</code> indicates exponentiation.
 * (The hash value of the empty string is zero.)
 *
 * @return  a hash code value for this object.
 */
public int hashCode() {
    int h = hash;
    int len = count;
    if (h == 0 && len > 0) {
        int off = offset;
        char val[] = value;
        for (int i = 0; i < len; i++) {
            h = 31*h + val[off++];
        }
        hash = h;
    }
    return h;
}