Yes, lists and arrays are effectively the same things. (There are some implementation differences internal to the language, mind you.)
Hashing means you perform some function, usually a form of one-way (lossy, as it were) encryption on the data to produce a (usually) unique value, often shorter than the original.
For example, here's the hashes for a few strings, according to Python's hash function. You'll notice they all produce a unique integer value, and all those integers are the same length.
"Hello" → 3483667490880649043
"Me" → 6066670828640188320
"Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow." → 7317767150724217908
"What evil lurks in the hearts of men? The shadow knows!" → -6411620787934941530
When two different input values have the same hash, that's known as a "hash collision", so any container that relies on a hash (such as Python's dictionaries) needs to be able to handle that situation.
For more information, watch this excellent explanation by the legendary @vaidehijoshi
:
Yes, lists and arrays are effectively the same things. (There are some implementation differences internal to the language, mind you.)
Hashing means you perform some function, usually a form of one-way (lossy, as it were) encryption on the data to produce a (usually) unique value, often shorter than the original.
For example, here's the hashes for a few strings, according to Python's
hashfunction. You'll notice they all produce a unique integer value, and all those integers are the same length."Hello" → 3483667490880649043
"Me" → 6066670828640188320
"Reverse the polarity of the neutron flow." → 7317767150724217908
"What evil lurks in the hearts of men? The shadow knows!" → -6411620787934941530
When two different input values have the same hash, that's known as a "hash collision", so any container that relies on a hash (such as Python's dictionaries) needs to be able to handle that situation.
For more information, watch this excellent explanation by the legendary @vaidehijoshi :
Hash Tables — BaseCS Video Series
Vaidehi Joshi ・ Jun 7 '18 ・ 1 min read
Thanks for the link, that's a great video and the visuals are quite helpful. Will check out the rest of her series, too.