Search operation in separate chaining

The search operation is one of the primary operations on a hash table and is used to retrieve the value of a key as stored in the hash table. The implementation is encapsulated in the search function and relies on the separate chaining collision resolution scheme to look for a value in the internal array of linked lists. Let us look at the algorithm and implementation of the search operation in a hash table implemented using separate chaining.

Algorithm

The search operation is quite simple. We only need to calculate the index (hash code) for the given key and then search for the key at the index. However, the hash table could have a collision for the given key (another key with the same hash code stored in the table), so we must follow a separate chaining scheme to search for the given key.