www.
openITis.
com | LINUX For YoU | SepTember 2008 105
S.
G.
GaneSh
The Joy of
Programming
Y
ou may not believe the following trivia, but that’s
where the fun lies!
A modern computer equivalent of a hashing
algorithm was used in Indian music a few...
More
www.
openITis.
com | LINUX For YoU | SepTember 2008 105
S.
G.
GaneSh
The Joy of
Programming
Y
ou may not believe the following trivia, but that’s
where the fun lies!
A modern computer equivalent of a hashing
algorithm was used in Indian music a few centuries before
hashing was invented for use in computer data structures!
Hashing is a fundamental technique used to derive a
numeric key from a value to quickly find the index in a table.
Many lovers of Carnatic music know the ‘Katapayadi Sutra’
that is used to find the ‘Mela’ number from a ‘Mela’ name; what
they may now know is that it is in fact a hashing algorithm.
Hashing was originally developed by H.
P.
Luhn of IBM in
1953 for use in computers; though the ‘Katapayadi Sutra’ was
obviously not meant to be used for hash tables, it provided a
scheme to derive numbers from names, which is nothing but a
hashing algorithm as we know it today.
The word ‘algorithm’ traces its origins to the
Indian number system and algebra!
The word ‘alg
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