HashSet vs. List performance

It's clear that a search performance of the generic HashSet<T> class is higher than of the generic List<T> class. Just compare the hash-based key with the linear approach in the List<T> class.

However calculating a hash key may itself take some CPU cycles, so for a small amount of items the linear search can be a real alternative to the HashSet<T>.

My question: where is the break-even?

To simplify the scenario (and to be fair) let's assume that the List<T> class uses the element's Equals() method to identify an item.

Solution 1:

A lot of people are saying that once you get to the size where speed is actually a concern that HashSet<T> will always beat List<T>, but that depends on what you are doing.

Let's say you have a List<T> that will only ever have on average 5 items in it. Over a large number of cycles, if a single item is added or removed each cycle, you may well be better off using a List<T>.

I did a test for this on my machine, and, well, it has to be very very small to get an advantage from List<T>. For a list of short strings, the advantage went away after size 5, for objects after size 20.

1 item LIST strs time: 617ms
1 item HASHSET strs time: 1332ms

2 item LIST strs time: 781ms
2 item HASHSET strs time: 1354ms

3 item LIST strs time: 950ms
3 item HASHSET strs time: 1405ms

4 item LIST strs time: 1126ms
4 item HASHSET strs time: 1441ms

5 item LIST strs time: 1370ms
5 item HASHSET strs time: 1452ms

6 item LIST strs time: 1481ms
6 item HASHSET strs time: 1418ms

7 item LIST strs time: 1581ms
7 item HASHSET strs time: 1464ms

8 item LIST strs time: 1726ms
8 item HASHSET strs time: 1398ms

9 item LIST strs time: 1901ms
9 item HASHSET strs time: 1433ms

1 item LIST objs time: 614ms
1 item HASHSET objs time: 1993ms

4 item LIST objs time: 837ms
4 item HASHSET objs time: 1914ms

7 item LIST objs time: 1070ms
7 item HASHSET objs time: 1900ms

10 item LIST objs time: 1267ms
10 item HASHSET objs time: 1904ms

13 item LIST objs time: 1494ms
13 item HASHSET objs time: 1893ms

16 item LIST objs time: 1695ms
16 item HASHSET objs time: 1879ms

19 item LIST objs time: 1902ms
19 item HASHSET objs time: 1950ms

22 item LIST objs time: 2136ms
22 item HASHSET objs time: 1893ms

25 item LIST objs time: 2357ms
25 item HASHSET objs time: 1826ms

28 item LIST objs time: 2555ms
28 item HASHSET objs time: 1865ms

31 item LIST objs time: 2755ms
31 item HASHSET objs time: 1963ms

34 item LIST objs time: 3025ms
34 item HASHSET objs time: 1874ms

37 item LIST objs time: 3195ms
37 item HASHSET objs time: 1958ms

40 item LIST objs time: 3401ms
40 item HASHSET objs time: 1855ms

43 item LIST objs time: 3618ms
43 item HASHSET objs time: 1869ms

46 item LIST objs time: 3883ms
46 item HASHSET objs time: 2046ms

49 item LIST objs time: 4218ms
49 item HASHSET objs time: 1873ms

Here is that data displayed as a graph:

Here's the code:

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    int times = 10000000;


    for (int listSize = 1; listSize < 10; listSize++)
    {
        List<string> list = new List<string>();
        HashSet<string> hashset = new HashSet<string>();

        for (int i = 0; i < listSize; i++)
        {
            list.Add("string" + i.ToString());
            hashset.Add("string" + i.ToString());
        }

        Stopwatch timer = new Stopwatch();
        timer.Start();
        for (int i = 0; i < times; i++)
        {
            list.Remove("string0");
            list.Add("string0");
        }
        timer.Stop();
        Console.WriteLine(listSize.ToString() + " item LIST strs time: " + timer.ElapsedMilliseconds.ToString() + "ms");


        timer = new Stopwatch();
        timer.Start();
        for (int i = 0; i < times; i++)
        {
            hashset.Remove("string0");
            hashset.Add("string0");
        }
        timer.Stop();
        Console.WriteLine(listSize.ToString() + " item HASHSET strs time: " + timer.ElapsedMilliseconds.ToString() + "ms");
        Console.WriteLine();
    }


    for (int listSize = 1; listSize < 50; listSize+=3)
    {
        List<object> list = new List<object>();
        HashSet<object> hashset = new HashSet<object>();

        for (int i = 0; i < listSize; i++)
        {
            list.Add(new object());
            hashset.Add(new object());
        }

        object objToAddRem = list[0];

        Stopwatch timer = new Stopwatch();
        timer.Start();
        for (int i = 0; i < times; i++)
        {
            list.Remove(objToAddRem);
            list.Add(objToAddRem);
        }
        timer.Stop();
        Console.WriteLine(listSize.ToString() + " item LIST objs time: " + timer.ElapsedMilliseconds.ToString() + "ms");



        timer = new Stopwatch();
        timer.Start();
        for (int i = 0; i < times; i++)
        {
            hashset.Remove(objToAddRem);
            hashset.Add(objToAddRem);
        }
        timer.Stop();
        Console.WriteLine(listSize.ToString() + " item HASHSET objs time: " + timer.ElapsedMilliseconds.ToString() + "ms");
        Console.WriteLine();
    }

    Console.ReadLine();
}

Solution 2:

It's essentially pointless to compare two structures for performance that behave differently. Use the structure that conveys the intent. Even if you say your List<T> wouldn't have duplicates and iteration order doesn't matter making it comparable to a HashSet<T>, its still a poor choice to use List<T> because its relatively less fault tolerant.

That said, I will inspect some other aspects of performance,

+------------+--------+-------------+-----------+----------+----------+-----------+
| Collection | Random | Containment | Insertion | Addition |  Removal | Memory    |
|            | access |             |           |          |          |           |
+------------+--------+-------------+-----------+----------+----------+-----------+
| List<T>    | O(1)   | O(n)        | O(n)      | O(1)*    | O(n)     | Lesser    |
| HashSet<T> | O(n)   | O(1)        | n/a       | O(1)     | O(1)     | Greater** |
+------------+--------+-------------+-----------+----------+----------+-----------+

• Even though addition is O(1) in both cases, it will be relatively slower in HashSet since it involves cost of precomputing hash code before storing it.

• The superior scalability of HashSet has a memory cost. Every entry is stored as a new object along with its hash code. This article might give you an idea.

Solution 3:

You're looking at this wrong. Yes a linear search of a List will beat a HashSet for a small number of items. But the performance difference usually doesn't matter for collections that small. It's generally the large collections you have to worry about, and that's where you think in terms of Big-O. However, if you've measured a real bottleneck on HashSet performance, then you can try to create a hybrid List/HashSet, but you'll do that by conducting lots of empirical performance tests - not asking questions on SO.