What happens when two elements receive the same hash value in a hash table?

When two elements in a hash table have the same hash value, a collision occurs. In this case, the hash table should use a collision resolution mechanism to correctly store both elements.

In Go (and many other languages), chaining is commonly used, where elements with the same hash are stored in a linked list or another container within a single table cell. During search or insertion, this list is traversed to find the desired element or add a new one.

An example of simplified collision resolution:

// Suppose we have a hash table with chaining
var table = make(map[int][]string)

func insert(key int, value string) {
    table[key] = append(table[key], value) // add to the chain
}

func find(key int) []string {
    return table[key] // return all elements with this hash
}

Thus, collisions do not lead to data loss but can affect the performance of operations.