How can I hash a string to an int using c++?

Question

I have to write my own hash function. If I wanted to just make the simple hash function that maps each letter in the string to a numerical value (i.e. a=1, b=2, c=3, ...), is there a way I can perform this hash on a string without having to first convert it to a c-string to look at each individual char? Is there a more efficient way of hashing strings?

Answer 1

C++11 ships with a standard hashing function for strings.

https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/string/basic_string/hash

#include <string>
#include<functional> // hash
int main(){
    std::string s = "Hello";
    std::size_t hash = std::hash<std::string>{}(s);
}

Answer 2

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <algorithm>

using namespace std;

// a variation on dan bernstein's algorithm
// [http://www.cse.yorku.ca/~oz/hash.html]
template<typename Int>
struct hash {
    hash() : acc(5381) { }
    template<typename Ch>
    void operator()(Ch ch) { acc = ((acc << 5) + acc) ^ ch; }
    operator Int() const { return acc; }
    Int acc;
};

int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
    string s("Hellp, world");
    cout << hex << showbase
        << for_each(s.begin(), s.end(), hash<unsigned long long>()) << '\n';
    return 0;
}

Answer 3

From personal experience I know that this works and produces good distributions. (Plagiarised from http://www.cse.yorku.ca/~oz/hash.html):

djb2

this algorithm (k=33) was first reported by dan bernstein many years ago in comp.lang.c. another version of this algorithm (now favored by bernstein) uses xor: hash(i) = hash(i - 1) * 33 ^ str[i]; the magic of number 33 (why it works better than many other constants, prime or not) has never been adequately explained.

unsigned long hash(unsigned char *str) {
    unsigned long hash = 5381;
    int c;

    while (c = *str++) {
        hash = ((hash << 5) + hash) + c; /* hash * 33 + c */
    }

    return hash;
}