What happens when a duplicate key is put into a HashMap?

user_202045 0
Viewed 548337

If I pass the same key multiple times to HashMap’s put method, what happens to the original value? And what if even the value repeats? I didn’t find any documentation on this.

Case 1: Overwritten values for a key

Map mymap = new HashMap();
mymap.put("1","one");
mymap.put("1","not one");
mymap.put("1","surely not one");
System.out.println(mymap.get("1"));

We get surely not one.

Case 2: Duplicate value

Map mymap = new HashMap();
mymap.put("1","one");
mymap.put("1","not one");
mymap.put("1","surely not one");
// The following line was added:
mymap.put("1","one");
System.out.println(mymap.get("1"));

We get one.

But what happens to the other values? I was teaching basics to a student and I was asked this. Is the Map like a bucket where the last value is referenced (but in memory)?

hashmap hashtable java
12 Answers

It replaces the existing value in the map for the respective key. And if no key exists with the same name then it creates a key with the value provided. eg:

Map mymap = new HashMap();
mymap.put("1","one");
mymap.put("1","two");

OUTPUT key = "1", value = "two"

So, the previous value gets overwritten.

user_80109850

The prior value for the key is dropped and replaced with the new one.

If you'd like to keep all the values a key is given, you might consider implementing something like this:

import org.apache.commons.collections.MultiHashMap;
import java.util.Set;
import java.util.Map;
import java.util.Iterator;
import java.util.List;
public class MultiMapExample {

   public static void main(String[] args) {
      MultiHashMap mp=new MultiHashMap();
      mp.put("a", 10);
      mp.put("a", 11);
      mp.put("a", 12);
      mp.put("b", 13);
      mp.put("c", 14);
      mp.put("e", 15);
      List list = null;

      Set set = mp.entrySet();
      Iterator i = set.iterator();
      while(i.hasNext()) {
         Map.Entry me = (Map.Entry)i.next();
         list=(List)mp.get(me.getKey());

         for(int j=0;j<list.size();j++)
         {
          System.out.println(me.getKey()+": value :"+list.get(j));
         }
      }
   }
}
user_12176960

Maps from JDK are not meant for storing data under duplicated keys.

  • At best new value will override the previous ones.

  • Worse scenario is exception (e.g when you try to collect it as a stream):

No duplicates:

Stream.of("one").collect(Collectors.toMap(x -> x, x -> x))

Ok. You will get: $2 ==> {one=one}

Duplicated stream:

Stream.of("one", "not one", "surely not one").collect(Collectors.toMap(x -> 1, x -> x))

Exception java.lang.IllegalStateException: Duplicate key 1 (attempted merging values one and not one) | at Collectors.duplicateKeyException (Collectors.java:133) | at Collectors.lambda$uniqKeysMapAccumulator$1 (Collectors.java:180) | at ReduceOps$3ReducingSink.accept (ReduceOps.java:169) | at Spliterators$ArraySpliterator.forEachRemaining (Spliterators.java:948) | at AbstractPipeline.copyInto (AbstractPipeline.java:484) | at AbstractPipeline.wrapAndCopyInto (AbstractPipeline.java:474) | at ReduceOps$ReduceOp.evaluateSequential (ReduceOps.java:913) | at AbstractPipeline.evaluate (AbstractPipeline.java:234) | at ReferencePipeline.collect (ReferencePipeline.java:578) | at (#4:1)

To deal with duplicated keys - use other package, e.g: https://google.github.io/guava/releases/19.0/api/docs/com/google/common/collect/Multimap.html

There is a lot of other implementations dealing with duplicated keys. Those are needed for web (e.g. duplicated cookie keys, Http headers can have same fields, ...)

Good luck! :)

user_69311190
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