Hash tables v self-balancing search trees

Question

I am curious to know what is the reasoning that could overweighs towards using a self-balancing tree technique to store items than using a hash table.

I see that hash

Answer 1

Just wanted to add :

• Balanced binary trees have a predictable time of fetching a data [log n] independent of the type of data. Many times that may be important for your application to estimate the response times for your application. [hash tables may have unpredictable response times]. Remember for smaller n's as in most common use cases the difference in performance in an in-memory look up is hardly going to matter and the bottle neck of the system is going to be elsewhere and sometimes you just want to make the system much simpler to debug and analyze.

• Trees are generally more memory efficient compared to hash tables and much simpler to implement without any analysis on the distribution of input keys and possible collisions etc.