Hash tables can be implemented in any programming language, including Awk. However, the choice of programming language is not the most important thing compared to other critical choices. Hash tables ...

Using a power of two means you just chop off the top bits of the Hash to make it fit in the table. The reasoning is also dead simple, bitwise operations on CPU are way cheaper than Modulo.

Hash tables have been around since the 1950s, and are an example of a key-value store where a hash function is used to generate the index for the data value based on the key itself.

Making fast hash tables in programming, which don't cause collision trouble, is one of computing's holy grails. Facebook thinks it's created a good one.