Author: Stan Eisenstat
Subject: Re: [Cs323] CHAR_BIT
Date: Wednesday, 11 Nov 2020, 19:59:51

    > Message Posted By: Unknown
    >
    > Is it necessary to use CHAR_BIT instead of just the number 8?

No, but your code is easier to understand and modify
when you use symbolic constants rather than numbers.
For example, for encode and decode 8 is the value of
both CHAR_BIT (which will never change) and the ratio of
the maximum number of entries to the number of chains
(ignoring the -1 used to make the hash function better).
If you decide to allow a larger load average, you will
want to change some of the 8's to 16's.  But you can
only discover which ones by looking at the context in
which it appears.

--Stan-