Which collision resolution technique stores all elements that map to the same index in a separate chain or bucket?

• A. Linear probing
• B. Quadratic probing
• C. Chaining
• D. Double hashing

Answer: (C)

When resolving collisions in a hash table, organizing elements that share the same index into a separate chain or bucket is called chaining. In chaining, each index in the table points to a collection (often a linked list) of all items whose hash value maps to that index. Insertion adds the new item to that bucket, and lookup traverses the bucket to find the desired key. This approach allows multiple records to share a single index without needing to relocate them to other slots.

Other techniques place collided items into different slots within the main table along a probing sequence: linear probing checks the next slot, quadratic probing uses a squared offset for subsequent probes, and double hashing uses a second hash function to determine the step size. Each of those methods stores all items within the table itself, rather than in a separate chain at the index.