Hashtable in C++?

I usually use C++ stdlib map whenever I need to store some data associated with a specific type of value (a key value - e.g. a string or other object). The stdlib map implementation is based on trees which provides better performance (O(log n)) than the standard array or stdlib vector.

My questions is, do you know of any C++ "standard" hashtable implementation that provides even better performance (O(1))? Something similar to what is available in the Hashtable class from the Java API.

Solution 1:

If you're using C++11, you have access to the <unordered_map> and <unordered_set> headers. These provide classes std::unordered_map and std::unordered_set.

If you're using C++03 with TR1, you have access to the classes std::tr1::unordered_map and std::tr1::unordered_set, using the same headers (unless you're using GCC, in which case the headers are <tr1/unordered_map> and <tr1/unordered_set> instead).

In all cases, there are corresponding unordered_multimap and unordered_multiset types too.

Solution 2:

If you don't already have unordered_map or unordered_set, they are part of boost.
Here's the documentation for both.