240 is about 1012 entries, so if you're unlucky, you may moving into the territory of very large databases (see, for example, this site).

It may help if you give a description of what sort of problem this is intended to solve. Somebody here may have a better algorithm. Of course, if you've already got the optimal solution, you may want to write it up in a paper to present at one of the upcoming VLDB conferences.

Information about American English usage here and here. Floating point issues? Please read this before posting. — emc

In reply to Re: Hash entries starting with a given string. by swampyankee
in thread Hash entries starting with a given string. by SwiftEagle

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