dan@Apple.COM (Dan Allen) (03/12/90)
The HP-48SX has a neat function that returns the amount of memory any object occupies, as well as a binary checksum. This BYTES function seems to do a good job of hashing objects. Does anyone know the details of the internal checksumming routine? Note: the numbers -9 through 9 checksum to zero, as they are 2.5 byte objects (pointers to these frequently used numbers in ROM), whereas other numbers are 10.5 bytes and have a very well scattered range of checksums. Note #2: the checksum operation is VERY fast compared to any comparable checksumming operations that I have written. Conjecture #1: if you need to create a hash table on the HP-48, using BYTES as your hash function would be the way to go. Any comments? Dan Allen Apple Computer