Let's say I want to build a perfect hash table for looking up an array where the predefined keys are 12 Months, thus I would want
hash("January")==0
hash("December")==11
I run my Month names through gperf and got a nice hash function, but it appears to give out 16 buckets(or rather the range is 16)!
#define MIN_HASH_VALUE 3
#define MAX_HASH_VALUE 18
/* maximum key range = 16, duplicates = 0 */
Looking at the generated gperf code, its hash function code does a simple return of len plus char value lookup from a 256 size table. Somehow, in my head I imagined a fancy looking function... :)
What if I want exactly 12 buckets(that is I do not want to skip over unused buckets)? For small sets as this, it really doesn't matter, but when I have 1000 predefined keys and want exactly 1000 buckets in a row?
Can one find a deterministic way to do this?
The only alternative to gperf I know is cmph : http://cmph.sourceforge.net/ but, as Jerome said in the comment, having 16 buckets provides you some speed benefit.
When I first looked at minimal perfect hasihing I found very interesting readings on CiteseerX but I resisted the temptation to try coding one of those solutions myself. I know I would end up with an inferior solution respect to gperf or cmph or, even assuming the solution was comparable, I would have to spend a lot of time on it.