Delete operation in separate chaining

The delete operation is another primary operation on a hash table and is used to delete a key-value mapping(Record) from the hash table. If the key is not in the hash table, it is a no-op(nothing is done). The implementation is encapsulated in the delete function, which uses separate chaining to search for the key first. Let us look at the algorithm and implementation of the delete operation in a hash table implemented using separate chaining.

Algorithm

The delete operation is also an extension of the search operation. Like the search operation, we calculate the index (hash code) for the given key and search the linked list at that index for a record with the given key. We need to consider two cases.