How can I increase the performance in a map lookup with key type std::string?

Question

I\'m using a std::map (VC++ implementation) and it\'s a little slow for lookups via the map\'s find method.

The key type is std::string.

Answer 1

You might consider pre-computing a hash for a string, and saving that in your map. Doing so gives the advantage of hash compares instead of string compares during the search through the std::map tree.

class HashedString
{
  unsigned m_hash;
  std::string m_string;

public:
  HashedString(const std::string& str)
    : m_hash(HashString(str))
    , m_string(str)
  {};
  // ... copy constructor and etc...

  unsigned GetHash() const {return m_hash;}
  const std::string& GetString() const {return m_string;}
};

This has the benefits of computing a hash of the string once, on construction. After this, you could implement a comparison function:

struct comp
{
  bool operator()(const HashedString& lhs, const HashedString& rhs)
  {
    if(lhs.GetHash() < rhs.GetHash()) return true;
    if(lhs.GetHash() > rhs.GetHash()) return false;
    return lhs.GetString() < rhs.GetString();
  }
};

Since hashes are now computed on HashedString construction, they are stored that way in the std::map, and so the compare can happen very quickly (an integer compare) in an astronomically high percentage of the time, falling back on standard string compares when the hashes are equal.