Map Technical Details

In this document you can find a quick overview of the technical aspects (internal design, memory layout, etc.) of the Map data structure.

Map is an hash table that uses open addressing with linear probing for collision resolution and the FNV-1a algorithm as its hashing function. Resizing is performed automatically by doubling the capacity when the load factor exceeds 75%. Internally, this data structure is represented by the following two structures:

typedef struct {
    char *key;
    void *value;
    element_state_t state;
} map_element_t;

typedef struct {
    map_element_t *elements;
    size_t capacity;
    size_t size;
    size_t tombstone_count;
} map_t;

where the key variable represent a string used to index the value. The state, instead, indicates whether the entry is empty, occupied or deleted and is primarily used by the garbage collector for internal memory management. An array of map_element_t, with the variables indicating the capacity, the current size and the tombstone count (that is, the number of delete entries), form a map_t data type.

The keys are copied by the hashmap; this means that it owns them and is therefore responsible for managing their memory. Values, on the other hand, are stored as pointers. This means that the hashmap does NOT own them and that the caller is responsible for managing their memory; this includes: allocate enough memory for them, ensure that the pointers remain valid for their whole lifecycle on the map, delete old values when updating a key and, if the values were heap-allocated, free them before removing the keys or destroying the map.

The Map data structure supports the following methods:

map_result_t map_new(): initialize a new map;
map_result_t map_add(map, key, value): add a (key, value) pair to the map;
map_result_t map_get(map, key): retrieve a values indexed by key if it exists;
map_result_t map_remove(map, key): remove a key from the map if it exists;
map_result_t map_clear(map): reset the map state;
map_result_t map_destroy(map): delete the map;
size_t map_size(map): returns map size (i.e., the number of elements);
size_t map_capacity(map): returns map capacity (i.e., map total size).

As you can see by the previous function signatures, most methods that operate on the Map data type return a custom type called map_result_t which is defined as follows:

typedef enum {
    MAP_OK = 0x0,
    MAP_ERR_ALLOCATE,
    MAP_ERR_INVALID,
    MAP_ERR_NOT_FOUND
} map_status_t;

typedef struct {
    map_status_t status;
    uint8_t message[RESULT_MSG_SIZE];
    union {
        map_t *map;
        void *element;
    } value;
} map_result_t;

Each method that returns such type indicates whether the operation was successful or not by setting the status field and by providing a descriptive message on the message field. If the operation was successful (that is, status == MAP_OK), you can either move on with the rest of the program or read the returned value from the sum data type. Of course, you can choose to ignore the return value (if you're brave enough :D), as illustrated in the first part of the README.

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Map Technical Details

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