Hash table

Okay kiddo, imagine you have a bunch of toys that you want to organize in a toy box. But you don't want to just throw them all in randomly, you want to put them in specific spots so you can find them easily when you're looking for them later.

A hash table is like a really smart toy box that knows exactly where each toy should go. Instead of just throwing the toys in randomly, you give each toy a special tag that tells the toy box which spot it belongs in. This tag is called a "key".

So when you want to put your toy car in the toy box, you tell the hash table "hey, put this toy car in spot number 5". The hash table will remember that spot number 5 belongs to your toy car, so when you ask for the toy car later, it can quickly find it in that spot.

Now let's say you want to find your toy bear. You tell the hash table "hey, give me the toy that goes with key number 7". The hash table will know that key number 7 belongs to your toy bear, and it can quickly give it to you.

The cool thing about a hash table is that it can quickly look up any toy based on its key. It doesn't matter if you have 10 toys or a thousand, the hash table will still be able to find them all super fast.

So that's a hash table! It's a really smart way to keep track of lots of things, like toys or numbers or words or anything else you can think of.