Insert operation in linear probing

The insert operation is another primary operation on a hash table and is used to insert a key value mapping(Record) into the hash table. If the key is already in the hash table, the insert operation updates its value to the new value supplied. The implementation is encapsulated in the insert function and relies on the search operation to find the value first. Let us look at the algorithm and implementation of the insert operation in a hash table implemented using linear probing.

Algorithm

The insert operation is just an extension of the search operation. Like the search operation, we calculate the index (hash code) for the given key and search the internal array for the given key starting from that index. We need to consider three cases.