HashMap : Java Glossary

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HashMap
A HashMap lets you look up values by exact key (always case-sensitive). It is very much like a Hashtable, except that it is faster and not thread-safe. There are some minor other differences:

Read the Hashtable entry. Nearly all of it also applies to HashMap,

The capacity of a table is not the number of elements you plan to add! If you specify a capacity of 128 and a load factor of .75, HashMap will allocate only 128 slots, not the 256 you need for efficient access. The load factor kicks in only when deciding when it is time to double the size of the table, in this case, just after you have added 96 elements, not in deciding its initial size. It is up to you to leave some breathing room.

Don’t use a HashMap unless you need the lookup feature. It takes orders of magnitude more time to build a HashMap than an ArrayList.

Sample Use Cake Eating
AutoBoxing Iterations Speed
Manual Boxing Iterations Initialisation
Removing Elements from a HashMap Tips
Modifying HashMap Keys and Values Learning More
Accumulate Links
IdentityHashMap

Sample Use

In this case we use a String to look up a String in a HashMap. We use the modern Java version 1.5 or later techniques of generics and for:each loops. Note though that there is no generic type checking on get. It will take anything. At run time any objects of the wrong type are detected as non-matching. This is more compatible with the old non-generic version. This example also shows how to export the data in random and sorted orders. HashMap is a Map, not a Collection, though it is considered part of the Java Collections Framework. However, the result of HashMap. values and HashMap. keySet is a Collection. You can use Collection. toArray to export either to an array.

AutoBoxing Iterations

In this case we use a String to look up a number in a HashMap. We use the JDK (Java Development Kit) 1.5+ autoboxing features and the  Java version 1.5 or later style for:each

Old Style Manual Boxing Iterations

In this case we use a String to look up a number in a HashMap. We use the Java version 1.1 or later manual boxing and the old style for loop.

Removing Elements from a HashMap

You can’t simply iterate over a HashMap, you must iterate over either the corresponding keySet, values, or entrySet. Further, you may not remove elements from the HashMap while you are iterating, unless you remove using the Iterator’s remove method.

Modifying HashMap Keys and Values

There are four common types of modification you might want to do to the keys or values in a HashMap.
  1. To change a HashMap key, you look up the value object with get, then remove the old key and put it with the new key.
  2. To change the fields in a value object, look the value object up by key with get, then use its setter methods.
  3. To replace the value object in its entirely, just put a new value object at the old key.
  4. To replace the value object with one based on the old, look the value object up with get, create a new object, copy data over from the old one, then put the new object under the same key.

Have a look at this code to see how it is done.

Accumulate: A Real World Code Example

The Accumulate class uses a HashMap to accumulate values against a variety of categories. Source is included. You might use it to accumulate hours by category in a timesheet, or count how many times various words appeared in a document. Studying the source will give you some hints on what you can do with HashMaps. Here is how you use it:

IdentityHashMap

IdentityHashMap uses == instead of equals to compare objects for equality. It also uses the original Object. hashCode() via System.identityHashCode ( Object x). This is useful when you want a HashMap that keeps track of a set of heterogeneous objects. Serialization uses one to track which objects have already been sent to the stream and where in the stream they are. It does not use Entry objects and chains. I works by alternating pointers to keys and values in a single table.

Having Your Cake and Eating It Too

Let’s say you can’t decide between the speed of an ArrayList that looks up by an indexing int and TreeMap that looks up by surname and a HashMap that looks up by social insurance number.

The beauty of Java Collections is you can have all three. Just maintain three different Collections on the same set of objects. The three Collections don’t have to contain the exact same elements.

HashMap will give you an Iterator or an array of the whole collection at any point, which may be sufficient so that you don’t need an auxiliary ArrayList.

Speed

For fast HashMaps:

Initialisation

There is no HashMap constructor that takes a pair of arrays or an array of pairs. You could write your own.

You could spell out the initialisation code e.g.

Putting pairs in a CSV (Comma-Separated Value) file and loading it in a static initialiser makes it possible to maintain the list without recompiling. There are all kinds of tools to help you maintain CSV files. They are easier to key and proofread that Java source code.

If you are preparing a large HashMap to go into an Applet where you want to keep the size of the jar as small as possible, you can write a separate class to initialise the table, then save it as a serialized gzipped resource you embed in the jar. Then the only code you need in your Applet to initialise the HashMap is a single readObject call.

You can us the Properties class which lets you load from and save to an external file.

Tips

Future

HashMaps create thousands of little glue Entry objects to point to key and value. I suggest using contained objects that implement a getKey() method to find the key. Then you would not need the Entry glue. In HashMap Entry objects that hash to the same slot are chained together. This means a prev or next (or both) pointer in each Entry. You could get rid of the need for that by using either linear probing or double hashing. When you enumerated, the data objects automatically get both key and value since a reference to the key is embedded in the object.

Learning More

Oracle’s Javadoc on HashMap class : available:
Oracle’s Javadoc on IdentityHashMap class : available:
Oracle’s Javadoc on <span class="interface">Set</span> interface returned by keySet and entrySet : available:
Oracle’s Javadoc on IdentityHashMap class : available:
Oracle’s Javadoc on java.util.Map class : available:
Oracle’s Javadoc on LinkedHashMap class : available:
Oracle’s Javadoc on HashSet class : available:
Oracle’s Javadoc on ConcurrentHashMap class : available:
Oracle’s Javadoc on EnumMap class : available:
Oracle’s Javadoc on Collections.unmodifiableMap : available:
Oracle’s Javadoc on Collections.emptyMap() : available:
To understand HashMap, read up on Hashtable and HashCode.

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