Making Deletions
Deleting a record from a hashed file is more complicated than adding a record for two reasons:
- The slot freed by the deletion must not be allowed to hinder later searches
- It should be possible to reuse the freed slot for later additions.
In order to deal with deletions we use tombstones, i.e., a marker indicating that a record once lived there but no longer does. Tombstones solve both the problems caused by deletion.
Insertion of records is slightly different when using tombstones.