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In Java associative arrays are implemented as "maps", which are part of the Java collections framework. Since J2SE 5.0 and the introduction of generics into Java, collections can have a type specified; for example, an associative array that maps strings to strings might be specified as follows:
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.
As a single concrete data structure may be used to implement many abstract data types, some data structures may appear in multiple comparisons (for example, a hash map can be used to implement an associative array or a set).
A small phone book as a hash table. In computer science, a hash table is a data structure that implements an associative array, also called a dictionary or simply map; an associative array is an abstract data type that maps keys to values. [2]
For example, a priority queue is often implemented as a heap, while an associative array is often implemented as a hash table, so these abstract types are often referred to by this preferred implementation, as a "heap" or a "hash", though this is incorrect conceptually.
The following list contains syntax examples of how a range of element of an array can be accessed. In the following table: first – the index of the first element in the slice; last – the index of the last element in the slice; end – one more than the index of last element in the slice; len – the length of the slice (= end - first)
In the programming language C++, unordered associative containers are a group of class templates in the C++ Standard Library that implement hash table variants. Being templates , they can be used to store arbitrary elements, such as integers or custom classes.
The disadvantage of association lists is that the time to search is O(), where n is the length of the list. [3] For large lists, this may be much slower than the times that can be obtained by representing an associative array as a binary search tree or as a hash table.