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Bloom filter

Applies to: general

A Bloom filter is a compact, probabilistic set: it answers "definitely not present" or "possibly present" using a bit array and several hash functions. It can give false positives but never false negatives, trading a little accuracy for very small memory.

add(x):   set bits h1(x), h2(x), h3(x)
maybe(x): all those bits set? -> possibly present

See also: hash-set, hash-map