Re: Distinct ID Number Per Object?

From:
Lew <lew@lewscanon.nospam>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.java.programmer
Date:
Sat, 16 Jun 2007 15:55:26 -0400
Message-ID:
<T-GdnR22V7uy3enbnZ2dnUVZ_sDinZ2d@comcast.com>
Daniel Dyer wrote:

On Sat, 16 Jun 2007 20:17:28 +0100, Lew <lew@lewscanon.nospam> wrote:

Eric Sosman wrote:

Lew wrote:

Hal Vaughan wrote:

So is it only in extreme cases like this where hashcodes would be
duplicated?


Hash codes have even fewer values than Strings. That means there
must be proportionately more collisions. Have you read the Javadocs
on the hashCode() method? You should. Also read the Javadocs on
Map, HashMap and IdentityHashMap.

As Twisted pointed out, the "Identity", i.e., the internal "address"
of an object, is unique for the lifetime of that object. [...]

     Can you find this guarantee in the Javadoc or other
authoritative place? Does this rule out 64-bit JVM's?


You mean the guarantee that an object's "address" is unique during its
lifetime? How else would the JVM find a particular instance? In
other words, how could it possibly not be?

If two objects had the same "address", then a reference using that
"address" would not reference a single object, which contradicts the
very definition of an object reference.
<http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jls/third_edition/html/execution.html#12.5>

a reference to the newly created object is returned as the result
[of] the indicated constructor


There is no way for one "address" to point to two objects simultaneously.

This question has nothing to do with bit width, AFAICS. I'm not
really sure how there could even be a question here.


I think Eric's point is that the number of possible hash codes is
smaller than the number of objects that can be addressed in a 64-bit
JVM. Therefore System.identityHashCode(Object) cannot, in a 64-bit VM
at least, guarantee to return unique values for all objects on the heap.


The fact that he didn't mention that method in his question, but instead
referenced my comments about "address", meant it would've taken quite the leap
for me to understand that context.

Nothing in Eric's post makes mention of System.identityHashCode(Object). How
did you infer it?

--
Lew

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