Re: Do we want a hashset type?

On 6/10/23 17:46, Andrew Dunstan wrote:
> 
> On 2023-06-09 Fr 07:56, Joel Jacobson wrote:
>> On Fri, Jun 9, 2023, at 13:33, jian he wrote:
>> > Hi, I am quite new about C.....
>> > The following function I have 3 questions.
>> > 1. 7691,4201, I assume they are just random prime ints?
>>
>> Yes, 7691 and 4201 are likely chosen as random prime numbers.
>> In hash functions, prime numbers are often used to help in evenly
>> distributing
>> the hash values across the range and reduce the chance of collisions.
>>
>> > 2. I don't get the last return set, even the return type should be bool.
>>
>> Thanks, you found a mistake!
>>
>> The line
>>
>>     return set;
>>
>> is actually unreachable and should be removed.
>> The function will always return either true or false within the while
>> loop and
>> never reach the final return statement.
>>
>> I've attached a new incremental patch with this fix.
>>
>> > 3. I don't understand 13 in hash = (hash + 13) % set->maxelements;
>>
>> The value 13 is used for linear probing [1] in handling hash collisions.
>> Linear probing sequentially checks the next slot in the array when a
>> collision
>> occurs. 13, being a small prime number not near a power of 2, helps in
>> uniformly
>> distributing data and ensuring that all slots are probed, as it's
>> relatively prime
>> to the hash table size.
>>
>> Hm, I realise we actually don't ensure the hash table size and step
>> size (13)
>> are coprime. I've fixed that in the attached patch as well.
>>
>> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_probing
>>
>>
> 
> 
> Maybe you can post a full patch as well as incremental?
> 

I wonder if we should keep discussing this extension here, considering
it's going to be out of core (at least for now). Not sure how many
pgsql-hackers are interested in this, so maybe we should just move it to
github PRs or something ...


> Stylistically I think you should reduce reliance on magic numbers (like
> 13). Probably need some #define's?
> 

Yeah, absolutely. This was just pure laziness.


regard

-- 
Tomas Vondra
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