>I interpreted your comment to refer to the size of the backing store, because that is fundamentally what a hash key needs to be able to address.
Under the assumption (upthread) of constant resizing as element are added, the distinction is irrelevant. The more elements you have in the table, the more elements you need to address, and the more possible outputs your hash function needs to have.
And the needed size of the backing store scales with the number elements you want to store anyway.
>I didn't mean to say that, if you were using it that way, you were doing anything wrong, only that there appeared to be a mismatch.
Why bring up something like that if it doesn't translate into something relevant to the discussion e.g. to show my point to be in error?
Under the assumption (upthread) of constant resizing as element are added, the distinction is irrelevant. The more elements you have in the table, the more elements you need to address, and the more possible outputs your hash function needs to have.
And the needed size of the backing store scales with the number elements you want to store anyway.
>I didn't mean to say that, if you were using it that way, you were doing anything wrong, only that there appeared to be a mismatch.
Why bring up something like that if it doesn't translate into something relevant to the discussion e.g. to show my point to be in error?