Simple implementation of deletion from open-address hash table

Deletion from open-address hash table is not so easy as deletion from chained hash table, because in open-address table we can’t simply mark a slot containing deleted key as empty. Search for keys may become incorrect. The classical method to implement deletion is to mark slots in hash table by three values: “free”, “busy”, “deleted”. That method is easy to implement, but there are some disadvantages. In this article we consider alternative method of deletion keys, where we avoid using the mark “deleted”. The article contains the implementation of the method in Java.