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In mathematical terms, an associative array is a function with finite domain. [1] It supports 'lookup', 'remove', and 'insert' operations. The dictionary problem is the classic problem of designing efficient data structures that implement associative arrays. [2] The two major solutions to the dictionary problem are hash tables and search trees.
A hash function is any function that can be used to map data of arbitrary size to fixed-size values, though there are some hash functions that support variable-length output. [1] The values returned by a hash function are called hash values , hash codes , hash digests , digests , or simply hashes . [ 2 ]