Hashing array of strings as Merkle tree in one function

Question

I want to hash an array of strings into one hash as shown on scheme on the image below. But I do not want to implement some class based Merkle tree. It's just a simple function. Is this a good implementation or are there any possible improvements?

public static String hashStrings(@NotNull String [] strs)
{
    if (strs.length == 1) return hashString(strs[0]);

    List<String> hashes = new ArrayList<>();

    for (int i = 0; i < strs.length; i++)
    {
        hashes.add(hashString(strs[i]));
    }

    while(hashes.size() > 1)
    {
        int currentSize = hashes.size();
        int nextSize = currentSize % 2 == 0 ? currentSize / 2 : (currentSize + 1) / 2;

        for (int i = 0; i < currentSize - 1; i += 2)
        {
            hashes.set(i / 2, hashString(hashes.get(i) + hashes.get(i + 1)));
        }

        if (currentSize % 2 == 1)
        {
            hashes.set(nextSize - 1, hashString(hashes.get(currentSize - 1)));
        }

        hashes = hashes.subList(0, nextSize);
    }

    return hashes.get(0);
}

Vajk · Accepted Answer · 2019-06-16 19:32:04Z

In my opinion this statement is quite complicated to read, compared to what you want achieve:

int nextSize = currentSize % 2 == 0 ? currentSize / 2 : (currentSize + 1) / 2;

You could consider using some brackets:

int nextSize = (currentSize % 2 == 0) ? (currentSize / 2) : ((currentSize + 1) / 2);

Or just use Math.ceil():

int nextSize = (int) Math.ceil(currentSize / 2.0))

Furthermore you are computing hashes.size() twice per loop:

while(hashes.size() > 1)
{
    int currentSize = hashes.size();
    // ...

you could write:

int currentSize = hashes.size();
while(currentSize > 1)
{
    currentSize = hashes.size();
    // ....

instead.

Other than that your code looks fine to me, besides strs is not the best name for a parameter. You could rename it to improve readability and usability.

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