Homework 3: Hashing

Getting the Skeleton Files

As usual, run git pull skeleton master to get the skeleton files.


In this lightweight HW, we'll work to better our understanding of hash tables. Given that we have a midterm Thursday, we've tried to keep this homework short and to the point. Make sure you're spending your extra time going through study guides, preferably by working through problems with other students in the class!

Simple Oomage

Your goal in this part of the assignment will be to write an equals and hashCode method for the SimpleOomage class, as well as tests for the hashCode method in the TestSimpleOomage class.

To get started on this assignment, open up the class SimpleOomage and take a quick look around. A SimpleOomage has three properties: red, green, and blue, and each may have any value between 0 and 255. Try running SimpleOomage and you'll see four random Oomages drawn to the screen.


Start by running TestSimpleOomage. You'll see that you fail the testEquals test. The problem is that two SimpleOomage objects are not considered equal, even if they have the same red, green, and blue values. This is because SimpleOomage is using the default equals method, which simply checks to see if the the ooA and ooA2 references point to the same memory location.

Writing a proper equals method is a little tricker than it might sound at first blush. According to the Java language specification, your equals method should have the following properties to be in compliance:

One particularly vexing issue is that the argument passed to the equals method is of type Object, not of type SimpleOomage, so you will need to do a cast. However, doing a cast without verifying that the Object is a SimpleOomage wont' work, because you don't want your code to crash if someone calls .equals with an argument that is not a SimpleOomage. Thus, we'll need to use a new method of the Object class called getClass. For an example of a correct implementation of equals, see http://algs4.cs.princeton.edu/12oop/Date.java.html.

Override the equals method so that it works properly. Make sure to test your equals method by running the test again. Your code should now pass the test.

A Simple hashCode

In Java, it is critically important that if you override equals that you also override hashCode. Uncomment the testHashCodeAndEqualsConsistency method in TestSimpleOomage. Run it, and you'll see that it fails.

To see why this failure occurs, consider the code show below.

Two question to ponder when reading this code:


The Java specification for equals mentions this danger as well: "Note that it is generally necessary to override the hashCodemethod whenever the equals method is overridden, so as to maintain the general contract for the hashCode method, which states that equal objects must have equal hash codes."

Uncomment the given hashCode method in SimpleOomage, which will return a hashCode equal to red + green + blue. Note that this hashCode is now consistent with equals, so you should now pass all of the TestSimpleOomage tests.


While the given hashCode method is ok, in the sense that it is consistent with equals and thus will pass testHashCodeAndEqualsConsistency, it is only using a tiny fraction of the possible space of hash codes, meaning it will have many unnecessary collisions.

Our final goal for the SimpleOomage class will be to write a perfect hashCode function. By perfect, we mean that two SimpleOomages may only have the same hashCode only if they have the exact same red, green, and blue values.

... but before we write it, fill in the testHashCodePerfect of TestSimpleOomage with code that tests to see if the hashCode function is perfect. Hint: Try out every possible combination of red, green, and blue values and ensure that you never see the same value more than once.

Run this test and it should fail, since the provided hashCode method is not perfect.

A Perfect hashCode

To make the hashCode perfect, in the else statement of hashCode, replace return 0 with a new hash code calculation that is perfect, and set the USE_PERFECT_HASH variable to true. Finally, run TestSimpleOomage and verify that your perfect hashCode method passes your test. Your TestSimpleOomage test might take a few seconds to complete execution.

HashTable Visualizer

To get a better understanding of how hash tables work, we will now build a hash table visualizer. All you need to do is fill in the visualize method of HashTableVisualizer. To help you out, we've provided a class called HashTableDrawingUtility with the following API:

public class HashTableDrawingUtility {
    public static void setScale(double sf)
    public static void drawLabels(int M) 
    public static double yCoord(int bucketNum, int M)
    public static double xCoord(int bucketPos)        

Where the methods work as follows:

setScale(sf):         Sets the scaling factor for the drawing. Set 
                      to numbers less than 1 to fit more stuff on the
drawLabels(M):        Draws numerical labels for each bucket, where M
                      is the number of buckets.
yCoord(bucketNum, M): Returns the StdDraw Y coordinate of an item in
                      the given bucket number.
xCoord(bucketPos):    Returns the StdDraw X coodinate of an item at 
                      the given position in a bucket.

For example, if we have a SimpleOomage called someOomage, and it is in position number 3 of bucket number 9 out of 16 buckets, then xCoord(3) would give us the desired x coordinate and yCoord(9, 16) would give us the desired y coordinate. Thus, we'd call someOomage.draw(xCoord(3), yCoord(9, 16), scale) to visualize the SimpleOomage as it appears in the hash table with the scaling factor scale.

One potential ambiguity is how to map hash codes to bucket numbers. While there are many ways to do this, we'll use the technique from the optional textbook, where we calculate (hashCode & 0x7FFFFFFF) % M. You should not use Math.abs(hashCode) % M. See the FAQ for why.

In case you're curious, & 0x7FFFFFFF throws away the top bit of a number. We'll discuss this briefly in a later lecture in 61B.

Use these methods to fill in visualize(Set<Oomage> set, int M). When you're done, your visualization should look something like the following:


Experiment With the Visualizer (Optional)

Try increasing N and M and see how the visualizer behaves. If there isn't enough room to fit everything on screen, try resetting the scaling factor to a number less than one. Compare the distribution of items for the perfect vs. imperfect vs. default hashCodes. Does what you see match what you expect?

Complex Oomage

The ComplexOomage class is a more sophisticated beast. Instead of three instance variables representing red, green, and blue values, each ComplexOomage has an entire a list of ints between 0 and 255. This list may be of any length.

This time, you won't change the ComplexOomage class at all. Instead, your job will be to write tests to find the flaw in the hashCode function.


The provided hashCode is valid, but it does a potentially bad job of distributing items in a hash table.

Start by visualizing the spread of random ComplexOomage objects using the visualizer you just built. Use the randomComplexOomage method to generate random ComplexOomages. You should find that this visual test shows no apparent problem in the distribution.


Since a visual inspection of random ComplexOomage objects did not show the flaw, we'll need to do a more intensive inspection. Follow the directions in the starter file to fill in the helper method haveNiceHashCodeSpread.

Then run TestComplexOomage. The code should pass, since the testRandomItemsHashCodeSpread method that uses haveNiceHashCodeSpread is not smart enough to expose the flaw.

Note that haveNiceHashCodeSpread only really makes sense for large N (e.g. the test will trivially fail if N = 1, as 1 > 1 / 2.5).

testWithDeadlyParams and binary representations

Now finally we'll unveil the flaw. By carefully inspecting the given hashCode function, devise a test testWithDeadlyParams that this hashCode function fails due to poor distribution of ComplexOomage objects.

Given what we've learned in 61B so far, this is a really tricky problem! Consider how Java represents integers in binary (see lecture 23 for a review). For a hint, see Hint.java.

Your test should not fail due to an IllegalArgumentException.

Once you've written this test and ComplexOomage fails it, you're done with HW3!

Fix the hashCode (optional)

Consider how you might change the hashCode method of ComplexOomage so that testWithDeadlyParams passes. Are there other deadly parameters that might strike your hashCode method?


Submit a zip file containing just the folder for your hw3 package (similar to hw2).

To give you some small amount of flexibility in the problems you want to focus on, we've set up the AG to give you full credit so long as you pass all but one test. Thus if you're having trouble with any particular part of the HW, feel free to skip it at no penalty.


My perfect hashCode test is running out of memory.

Try increasing the amount of memory java is allowed to use. If you're running from the command line, you can do this with:

java -Xmx2048m hw3.hash.TestSimpleOomage

This tells Java it may use up to 2,048 megabytes of memory. If you don't have this much, try using 1024m instead. It is possible your computer does not have enough memory to complete the perfect hash code test. In this case, don't worry, our grader machine is similarly constrained and thus we won't be testing your test!

I'm failing the HashTableVisualizer test!

You must convert from hashCode to bucket number using (hashCode & 0x7FFFFFFF) % M. You should not use Math.abs(hashCode) % M.

Why can't I just use Math.abs?

The only real reason is what happens when you do Math.abs(-2147483648). Try it out.

I'm getting errors like file does not contain class hw3.hash.HashTableVisualizer in the autograder.

Your code must be part of the hw3.hash package, with the appropriate declaration at the top of the file.