[hinkley]

Yeah I'm gonna need an explanation too. Even with hashes hardened against DOS attacks, the lower bits tend to vary with the input far faster than the upper bits.

For instance, several popular hash algorithms (of the form 31 * hash + value) will have the same upper bits for any two strings of the same length, up to about 12 characters in length when the seed value finally gets pushed out. Unless you're still using 32 bit hashes for some reason and then it's most strings under 6 characters long.

Multiply by prime and then add or xor the next value guarantees that the bottom bits are less biased and so fits with any hashtable function that uses modular math, even if the modulus is taken by bit masking. Getting the upper bits to mix would take a different operator or larger operands.

I know I've encountered at least one hash function that uses a much larger prime (16 or more bits) as its multiplier, so it's not unheard of, but it's certainly not universal.