Re: std::map with nonunique keys

From:
Francesco <entuland@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Fri, 4 Sep 2009 02:31:14 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID:
<c04b7e5d-6a85-43ca-9e67-26b6bb3569f2@w36g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>
On 4 Set, 11:20, Ralf Goertz
<r_goe...@expires-2006-11-30.arcornews.de> wrote:

Hi,

ist it possible to have a map for which there are distinct keys k1 and
key with k1!=k2 and both k1<k2 and k2<k1 returning false? I'd like to
have something like

struct foo {
        int k[10];
        bool operator<(const foo& rhs) const {
                for (int i=0;i<9;++i)
                        if (k[i]!=rhs.k[i]) ret=

urn k[i]<rhs.k[i];

                return false;
        }

};

std::map<foo,int> evaluation_map;

The reason is that although two variables of type foo might be different
in k[9] there evaluation only depends on k[0]=85k[8]. If I understand it
correctly, a map never uses operator==, therefore the above shouldn't
produce undefined behaviour, right?


If your operator<(), applied twice, swapped, to a couple of keys,
finds them to be equal, then any operation on the map using either of
those keys will overwrite each other - that is, well defined behavior.

You - the implementer of the struct foo - know that two keys can be
physically different, but the map will find them logically equal and
will work on that assumption.

If you want multiple logically equivalent keys into a map you have to
use a multimap.

Hope that helps,
Francesco

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