chickadee » srfi-14 » char-set-hash

char-set-hash cs #!optional boundprocedure

Compute a hash value for the character set CS. BOUND is a non-negative exact integer specifying the range of the hash function. A positive value restricts the return value to the range [0,BOUND).

If BOUND is either zero or not given, the implementation may use an implementation-specific default value, chosen to be as large as is efficiently practical. For instance, the default range might be chosen for a given implementation to map all strings into the range of integers that can be represented with a single machine word.

Invariant:

 (char-set= cs_1 cs_2) => (= (char-set-hash cs_1 b) (char-set-hash cs_2 b))

A legal but nonetheless discouraged implementation:

(define (char-set-hash cs . maybe-bound) 1)

Rationale: allowing the user to specify an explicit bound simplifies user code by removing the mod operation that typically accompanies every hash computation, and also may allow the implementation of the hash function to exploit a reduced range to efficiently compute the hash value. E.g., for small bounds, the hash function may be computed in a fashion such that intermediate values never overflow into bignum integers, allowing the implementor to provide a fixnum-specific "fast path" for computing the common cases very rapidly.