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If all values fall into one bucket and overflow buckets accumulate, what will happen during same-size grow (repacking without increasing size)?

sobes.tech AI

Answer from AI

In Go, when working with hash tables (maps), each bucket has a fixed size, and overflow buckets are created to store additional elements in case of collisions. If all values fall into one bucket and overflow buckets accumulate, then during a same-size grow operation (repacking without increasing the number of buckets), elements are redistributed among the same buckets.

However, since the number of buckets does not increase, elements causing collisions will remain in the same buckets, and overflow buckets will continue to accumulate. This does not solve the collision problem and can lead to performance degradation during search and insertion, as chains of overflow buckets grow.

Thus, a same-size grow without increasing the number of buckets does not eliminate the problem of collisions and overflow buckets, but only redistributes elements within the same number of buckets, which can be inefficient when keys are heavily concentrated in a single bucket.

If all values fall into one bucket and overflow… - sobes.tech