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Concept
Associative array
Summary
In computer science, an associative array, map, symbol table, or dictionary is an abstract data type that stores a collection of (key, value) pairs, such that each possible key appears at most once in the collection. In mathematical terms, an associative array is a function with finite domain. It supports 'lookup', 'remove', and 'insert' operations.
The dictionary problem is the classic problem of designing efficient data structures that implement associative arrays.
The two major solutions to the dictionary problem are hash tables and search trees.
In some cases it is also possible to solve the problem using directly addressed arrays, binary search trees, or other more specialized structures.
Many programming languages include associative arrays as primitive data types, and they are available in software libraries for many others. Content-addressable memory is a form of direct hardware-level support for associative arrays.
Associative arrays have many applications including such fundamental programming patterns as memoization and the decorator pattern.
The name does not come from the associative property known in mathematics. Rather, it arises from the fact that values are associated with keys. It is not to be confused with associative processors.
In an associative array, the association between a key and a value is often known as a "mapping", and the same word mapping may also be used to refer to the process of creating a new association.
The operations that are usually defined for an associative array are:
Insert or put: add a new pair to the collection, mapping the key to its new value. Any existing mapping is overwritten. The arguments to this operation are the key and the value.
Remove or delete: remove a pair from the collection, unmapping a given key from its value. The argument to this operation is the key.
Lookup, find, or get: find the value (if any) that is bound to a given key. The argument to this operation is the key, and the value is returned from the operation.
Official source
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