Difference between Dictionary and Hashtable

Simply, Dictionary<TKey,TValue> is a generic type, allowing:

• static typing (and compile-time verification)
• use without boxing

If you are .NET 2.0 or above, you should prefer Dictionary<TKey,TValue> (and the other generic collections)

A subtle but important difference is that Hashtable supports multiple reader threads with a single writer thread, while Dictionary offers no thread safety. If you need thread safety with a generic dictionary, you must implement your own synchronization or (in .NET 4.0) use ConcurrentDictionary<TKey, TValue>.

Lets give an example that would explain the difference between hashtable and dictionary.

Here is a method that implements hashtable

public void MethodHashTable()
{
    Hashtable objHashTable = new Hashtable();
    objHashTable.Add(1, 100);    // int
    objHashTable.Add(2.99, 200); // float
    objHashTable.Add('A', 300);  // char
    objHashTable.Add("4", 400);  // string

    lblDisplay1.Text = objHashTable[1].ToString();
    lblDisplay2.Text = objHashTable[2.99].ToString();
    lblDisplay3.Text = objHashTable['A'].ToString();
    lblDisplay4.Text = objHashTable["4"].ToString();


    // ----------- Not Possible for HashTable ----------
    //foreach (KeyValuePair<string, int> pair in objHashTable)
    //{
    //    lblDisplay.Text = pair.Value + " " + lblDisplay.Text;
    //}
}

The following is for dictionary

  public void MethodDictionary()
  {
    Dictionary<string, int> dictionary = new Dictionary<string, int>();
    dictionary.Add("cat", 2);
    dictionary.Add("dog", 1);
    dictionary.Add("llama", 0);
    dictionary.Add("iguana", -1);

    //dictionary.Add(1, -2); // Compilation Error

    foreach (KeyValuePair<string, int> pair in dictionary)
    {
        lblDisplay.Text = pair.Value + " " + lblDisplay.Text;
    }
  }

There is one more important difference between a HashTable and Dictionary. If you use indexers to get a value out of a HashTable, the HashTable will successfully return null for a non-existent item, whereas the Dictionary will throw an error if you try accessing a item using a indexer which does not exist in the Dictionary

Dictionary is typed (so valuetypes don't need boxing), a Hashtable isn't (so valuetypes need boxing). Hashtable has a nicer way of obtaining a value than dictionary IMHO, because it always knows the value is an object. Though if you're using .NET 3.5, it's easy to write an extension method for dictionary to get similar behavior.

If you need multiple values per key, check out my sourcecode of MultiValueDictionary here: multimap in .NET

The Hashtable class is a specific type of dictionary class that uses an integer value (called a hash) to aid in the storage of its keys. The Hashtable class uses the hash to speed up the searching for a specific key in the collection. Every object in .NET derives from the Object class. This class supports the GetHash method, which returns an integer that uniquely identifies the object. The Hashtable class is a very efficient collection in general. The only issue with the Hashtable class is that it requires a bit of overhead, and for small collections (fewer than ten elements) the overhead can impede performance.

There is Some special difference between two which must be considered:

HashTable: is non-generic collection ,the biggest overhead of this collection is that it does boxing automatically for your values and in order to get your original value you need to perform unboxing , these to decrease your application performance as penalty.

Dictionary: This is generic type of collection where no implicit boxing, so no need to unboxing you will always get your original values which you were stored so it will improve your application performance.

the Second Considerable difference is:

if your were trying to access a value on from hash table on the basis of key that does not exist it will return null.But in the case of Dictionary it will give you KeyNotFoundException.