A std::map that keep track of the order of insertion?

I currently have a std::map<std::string,int> that stores an integer value to a unique string identifier, and I do look up with the string. It does mostly what I want, except that it does not keep track of the insertion order. So when I iterate the map to print out the values, they are sorted according to the string; but I want them to be sorted according to the order of (first) insertion.

I thought about using a vector<pair<string,int>> instead, but I need to look up the string and increment the integer values about 10,000,000 times, so I don't know whether a std::vector will be significantly slower.

Is there a way to use std::map or is there another std container that better suits my need?

I'm on GCC 3.4, and I have probably no more than 50 pairs of values in my std::map.

Solution 1:

If you have only 50 values in std::map you could copy them to std::vector before printing out and sort via std::sort using appropriate functor.

Or you could use boost::multi_index. It allows to use several indexes. In your case it could look like the following:

struct value_t {
      string s;
      int    i;
};

struct string_tag {};

typedef multi_index_container<
    value_t,
    indexed_by<
        random_access<>, // this index represents insertion order
        hashed_unique< tag<string_tag>, member<value_t, string, &value_t::s> >
    >
> values_t;

Solution 2:

You might combine a std::vector with a std::tr1::unordered_map (a hash table). Here's a link to Boost's documentation for unordered_map. You can use the vector to keep track of the insertion order and the hash table to do the frequent lookups. If you're doing hundreds of thousands of lookups, the difference between O(log n) lookup for std::map and O(1) for a hash table might be significant.

std::vector<std::string> insertOrder;
std::tr1::unordered_map<std::string, long> myTable;

// Initialize the hash table and record insert order.
myTable["foo"] = 0;
insertOrder.push_back("foo");
myTable["bar"] = 0;
insertOrder.push_back("bar");
myTable["baz"] = 0;
insertOrder.push_back("baz");

/* Increment things in myTable 100000 times */

// Print the final results.
for (int i = 0; i < insertOrder.size(); ++i)
{
    const std::string &s = insertOrder[i];
    std::cout << s << ' ' << myTable[s] << '\n';
}

Solution 3:

Tessil has a very nice implementaion of ordered map (and set) which is MIT license. You can find it here: ordered-map

Map example

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <cstdlib>
#include "ordered_map.h"

int main() {
tsl::ordered_map<char, int> map = {{'d', 1}, {'a', 2}, {'g', 3}};
map.insert({'b', 4});
map['h'] = 5;
map['e'] = 6;

map.erase('a');


// {d, 1} {g, 3} {b, 4} {h, 5} {e, 6}
for(const auto& key_value : map) {
    std::cout << "{" << key_value.first << ", " << key_value.second << "}" << std::endl;
}


map.unordered_erase('b');

// Break order: {d, 1} {g, 3} {e, 6} {h, 5}
for(const auto& key_value : map) {
    std::cout << "{" << key_value.first << ", " << key_value.second << "}" << std::endl;
}
}