Re: Map question

From:
Tom Anderson <twic@urchin.earth.li>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.java.programmer
Date:
Mon, 31 May 2010 15:12:35 +0100
Message-ID:
<alpine.DEB.1.10.1005311506540.25330@urchin.earth.li>
On Mon, 31 May 2010, laredotornado wrote:

I'm using Java 6. The Javadocs suggest that Map uses containsKey,


Map can't use anything, because it's an interface. I will assume you are
talking about HashMap.

and hence an Object's equals method to determine if the object is
already a key in the map. However, I'm noticing that when I define this
equals method on an object I'm inserting as a key in my Map (a HashMap):

    public boolean equals(Object obj) {
        SearchResultHotels hotel = (SearchResultHotels) obj;

An aside: if someone passes in an object which is not a
SearchResultHotels, you need to return false; this will throw a
ClassCastException, which is wrong. A common opening to equals
implementations is:

if (obj == this) return true;
if ((obj == null) || !(obj instanceof SearchResultHotels)) return false;
SearchResultHotels hotel = (SearchResultHotels)obj;

Or code to that effect.

         boolean ret = obj != null && ((SearchResultHotels) obj).getId() == getId();
        log.debug("\t comparing " + hotel.getName() + " to " + getName() + ":" + ret);
        return ret;
    }

I never see my log statement printed out when I call "map.put". What
am I missing?


You don't show anywhere near enough code to answer that. Post the code
that makes the map and does the put.

Assuming you're talking about a situation like:

Map<SearchResultHotels, Object> m = new HashMap<SearchResultHotels, Object>();
SearchResultHotels hotel = somehowCreateSearchResultHotels();
m.put(hotel, "foo");
m.put(hotel, "bar");

Then i have a feeling HashMap checks for object identity (with ==) before
calling equals, as a defensive optimisation in case the key objects have
equals methods that do not efficiently detect identity.

Try doing a put with a different but equal key:

SearchResultHotels hotel = somehowCreateSearchResultHotels();
m.put(hotel, "foo");
SearchResultHotels equalHotel = somehowCreateSearchResultHotels();
m.put(equalHotel, "bar");

tom

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