A data structure that stores key-value pairs and uses a hash function to compute an index where each value should be stored, allowing for very fast average-case lookup, insertion, and deletion operations. Also known as a hash map.
'Hash' comes from the culinary term meaning to chop up finely, first used in computing in the 1950s to describe scrambling data. 'Table' refers to the array-like structure. The combination emerged in the 1960s when computer scientists developed ways to 'hash' keys into table positions.
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