The linear hash film shows the improvement over table look-up when using random keys. In real use, things are not that random so you would expect some degradation. Performance is very good early on and it is not until quite late on that clusters start to build up so that the maximum length of search increases and the average length of search as well. Even so it still only a look-up average search length of 3 after about 80% full.

E F Max Length = 1 Max Length = 3 Max Length = 4 Max Length = 5 Max Length = 6 Max Length = 9 Max Length = 15 Max Length = 25 Max Length = 30 Max Length = 36 Max Length = 39 (1) i = hash(KEY) (2) If entry i empty or contains KEY exit (3) Otherwise i = i + 1, goto (2) Sound Design by www.hoppinggoldfish.com Linear Hash Linear Hash