It's a bit disingenuous to say java has given up and created a binary tree fallb... | Hacker News

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kccqzy on Nov 29, 2016 | parent | context | favorite | on: SeaHash: A fast, portable hash function in Rust

It's a bit disingenuous to say java has given up and created a binary tree fallback mode. It doesn't actually switch the whole hash table into a binary tree, but rather it switches the linked list inside each bucket into a binary tree, and only when a certain threshold is passed.

Gankro on Nov 29, 2016 [–]

If you trigger this fallback (e.g. someone is colliding all your hashes), your entire collection is probably stuffed into one bucket.

Degrading only individual buckets is of course a nice middle ground that avoids harsh discontinuities in performance for slightly bad inputs.

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