Question

Suppose I wanted to map data with a string as the key.
What container should I have chosen, map or unordered_map? unordered_map takes up more memory so let’s suppose memory isn’t an issue, and the concern is speed.

unordered_map should generally give average complexity of O(1) with the worst case of O(n).
In what cases would it get to O(n)?
When does a map get more time efficient than unordered_map? Does it happen when n is small?

Assuming I would use STL unordered_map with the default haser Vs. map. string is the key.

If I’m going to iterate over the elements rather than access an individual element each time, should I prefer map?

Answer 1

In practice, if memory is no issue, unordered_map is always faster if you want single element access.

The worst case is theoretical and bound to a single hash accounting for all of the elements. This is not of practical relevance. The unordered_map gets slower as soon as you have at least log N elements belonging to the same hash. This is also not of practical relevance. In some special scenarios you could use a specific hashing algorithm that ensures a more uniform distribution. For ordinary strings that don’t share a specific pattern, the generic hash functions coming with unordered_map are just as good.

If you want to traverse the map (using iterators) in a sorted fashion, you cannot use unordered_map. On the contrary, map not only allows that, but also can provide you with the next element in a map based on an approximation of the key (see lower_bound and upper_bound methods).