Intermediate C++ Game Programming Tutorial 24

Associative containers are super useful, both as a convenient fast way to create dictionary or mapping for real-world problems like managing game resources, and as a data structure to help solve more abstract algorithmic computer science problems. And hash tables are fast as balls.

Topics Covered

Part 1

• std::map container interface
• Binary tree data structure
• std::map key requirements (comparison)
• std::map gotchas (std::remove_if and const keys)
• std::set
• std::multimap and std::multiset

Part 2

• Hash table performance vs. binary tree performance
• Hash table data structure
• std::unordered_map key requirements
• Hash combining
• std::unordered_map bucket interface and hashing policy
• When to choose std::map over std::unordered_map

Video Timestamp Index

Tutorial 24.1

• The std::map<KeyType,ValueType> class 0:46

• • Maps consist of keys to lookup (associated with) values
  • map.insert( {key,value} ) to insert (key,value) pairs
  • map[key] returns a reference to the ValueType for a KeyType

• The Binary tree data structure 2:46

• • std::map performs lookup in O(log(n)), it uses a Binary tree data structure
  • Key properties of a Binary Tree (BT):

  - Nodes can have at most 2 children (hence: binary)

  - Each left child is smaller and each right child is larger than its parent

  - Insertion is done by navigating the tree along a route Left for smaller, Right for larger such that the order property always holds

  • The big advantage of the BT properties is that retrieval is very fast
  • The beauty of std::map is that we don't have to implement any of this; it's all there in the STL 7:00
  • The STL implementation is further optimized, e.g. it uses a red-black tree for BT rebalancing

• A look at the std::map cppreference.com documentation: Insert, Lookup, Find 7:35

• • map.insert() takes a pair type std::pair<KeyType,ValueType>, the Map's elements
  • C++ can deduce the pair Type, so map.insert({keyX,valueXYZ}); with curly braces will do the job
  • An even better way to insert is through map.emplace[] operation; it will construct the pair in-place.
  • For lookup, you can use square braces, map[x] will return a reference to the corresponding value
  • Note: a lookup with a new key value will create that element in the map with the default constructed ValueType value
  • insert or emplace with a key that already exists will NOT override the existing value: std::map::emplace returns a std::pair<iterator,bool> where the bool inidicates whether an insertion took place
  • map.find("xyz") returns an iterator to the element if it exitst, and an iterator to map.end() if it doesn't exist (useful to check if a key already exists)
  • std::map comes with iterators and because it is a sorted map, when you iterate over its elements with for (auto& el : map), it will be in order (of the keys)

• Requirements on KeyType 14:30

• • The KeyType has to be comparable. The third template parameter is a functor for KeyType Comparison that defaults to std::less<KeyType>
  • So by default keys have to implement the "less than" comparison operator or provide your own comparison functor when defining the map

• std::map cppreference.com documentation continued: Erase 15:28

• • std::map::erase offers three basic ways to erase elements:

  - With an iterator; returns an iterator following the last removed element

  - With an iterator range, idem

  - By key through map.erase(const KeyType& key); this operation returns the number of elements erased (in size_type)

• Important to know when working with associative containers 16:04

• • std::remove_if does not work with associative containers.

  - You have to iterate over the elements with for( auto i = map.begin(); i != map.end();)

  - And apply it = map.erase(...) in the body of your if logic, and ++i outside the if block.

  • Example: removing all elements whose keys have names with more than 2 characters:

  - std::remove_if( map.begin(),map.end(),[]( auto& el ){ return el.first.size() > 2; } );

Tutorial 24.2

• [WORK-IN-PROGRESS]

Homework Assignment

The homework for this video is to enable use of a custom datatype in unordered_map hashing over multiple (4) members of that datatype. The solution video is here.

Supplementary Link

• Data Structure / Algorithm Visualizations

See also

• Next in series (Tutorial 25)
• Intermediate C++ Game Programming Series