Which statement best describes collision resolution technique usage in hash tables?

• A. Open addressing with probing methods (e.g., linear probing)
• B. Separate chaining with linked lists
• C. Rebuilding the entire table after each insertion
• D. Duplicating the key in another bucket

Answer: (B)

Collisions happen in a hash table when multiple keys map to the same bucket, so a plan is needed to store all those items without moving everything around. Separate chaining with linked lists handles this by giving each bucket its own linked list of entries. When a new item hashes to a bucket, you simply append it to that bucket’s list. Searching involves going to the right bucket and scanning the list there until you find the key. This approach avoids reshuffling existing entries and lets the table grow naturally as more items hash to the same bucket. It keeps insertions simple and flexible, and lookups stay efficient as long as the chains don’t get too long. Alternatives like rebuilding the entire table after each insertion are painfully inefficient, and duplicating the key in another bucket isn’t a standard or sensible collision-resolution method. Open addressing with probing is another valid strategy, but it changes how collisions are resolved by searching within the table itself rather than in a separate per-bucket list. Thus, separate chaining with linked lists is a natural and common way to manage collisions in hash tables.