The behavior is obviously an oversight. I'd bet 1 to 10 that if you chased down the original author he would agree.
No sensible engineer would design a hash function that populates the lower 28 bits of the hash code, ALWAYS leaves bits 28 through 31 clear, and then SOMETIMES sets bit 32, but only rarely and only on certain architectures.
It makes no sense as a conscious design. The logical conclusion is that the intent was to create a 28-bit hash function, and the fact that the provided code sometimes sets bit 32 is clearly a bug.
Comments
The behavior is obviously an oversight. I'd bet 1 to 10 that if you chased down the original author he would agree.
No sensible engineer would design a hash function that populates the lower 28 bits of the hash code, ALWAYS leaves bits 28 through 31 clear, and then SOMETIMES sets bit 32, but only rarely and only on certain architectures.
It makes no sense as a conscious design. The logical conclusion is that the intent was to create a 28-bit hash function, and the fact that the provided code sometimes sets bit 32 is clearly a bug.