Question

I have a LinkedHashMap (called info) that contains name/age (string/int) pairs. How can I get the position of the key/value if I input the key? For example, if my LinkedHashMap looked like this {bob=12, jeremy=42, carly=21} and I was to search jeremy, it should return 1 as its in position 1. I was hoping I can use something like info.getIndex("jeremy").

Answer 1

HashMap implementations in general are un-ordered for Iteration.

LinkedHashMap is predictablely ordered for Iteration ( insertion order ) but does not expose the List interface and a LinkedList ( which is what mirrors the key set insertion order ) does not track index position itself either, it is very in-efficient to find the index as well. The LinkedHashMap doesn’t expose the reference to the internal LinkedList either.

The actual “Linked List” behavior is implementation specific. Some
may actually use an instance of LinkedList some many just have
Entry track a previous and next Entry and use that as its
implementation. Don’t assume anything without looking at the source.

The KeySet that contains the keys does not guarantee order as well because of the hashing algorithms used for placement in the backing data structure of the inherited HashMap. So you can’t use that.

The only way to do this, without writing your own implementation, is to walk the Iterator which uses the mirroring LinkedList and keep a count where you are, this will be very in-efficient with large data sets.

Solution

What it sounds like you want is original insertion order index positions, you would have to mirror the keys in the KeySet in something like an ArrayList, keep it in sync with updates to the HashMap and use it for finding position. Creating a sub-class of HashMap, say IndexedHashMap and adding this ArrayList internally and adding a .getKeyIndex(<K> key) that delegates to the internal ArrayList .indexOf() is probably the best way to go about this.

This is what LinkedHashMap does but with a LinkedList mirroring the KeySet instead of an ArrayList.