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The most frequently used general-purpose implementation of an associative array is with a hash table: an array combined with a hash function that separates each key into a separate "bucket" of the array. The basic idea behind a hash table is that accessing an element of an array via its index is a simple, constant-time operation.
In a hash table, a hash function takes a key as an input, which is associated with a datum or record and used to identify it to the data storage and retrieval application. The keys may be fixed-length, like an integer, or variable-length, like a name. In some cases, the key is the datum itself.
So, PHP can have non-consecutively numerically indexed arrays. The keys have to be of integer (floating point numbers are truncated to integer) or string type, while values can be of arbitrary types, including other arrays and objects. The arrays are heterogeneous: a single array can have keys of different types.
In order to find the value associated with a given key, a sequential search is used: each element of the list is searched in turn, starting at the head, until the key is found. Associative lists provide a simple way of implementing an associative array , but are efficient only when the number of keys is very small.
Each character in the string key set is represented via individual bits, which are used to traverse the trie over a string key. The implementations for these types of trie use vectorized CPU instructions to find the first set bit in a fixed-length key input (e.g. GCC 's __builtin_clz() intrinsic function ).
An associative array stores a set of (key, value) pairs and allows insertion, deletion, and lookup (search), with the constraint of unique keys. In the hash table implementation of associative arrays, an array A {\displaystyle A} of length m {\displaystyle m} is partially filled with n {\displaystyle n} elements, where m ≥ n {\displaystyle m ...
Python sets are very much like mathematical sets, and support operations like set intersection and union. Python also features a frozenset class for immutable sets, see Collection types. Dictionaries (class dict) are mutable mappings tying keys and corresponding values. Python has special syntax to create dictionaries ({key: value})
A message like "file upload complete" is a string that software shows to end users. In the program's source code, this message would likely appear as a string literal. User-entered text, like "I got a new job today" as a status update on a social media service. Instead of a string literal, the software would likely store this string in a database.