Firstly could someone clarify whether in C++ the use of the [] operator in conjunction with an unordered_map for lookups wraps a call to the find() method, or is using the [] operator quicker than find()?
Secondly, in the following piece of code I suspect in cases where the key is not already in the unordered_map I am performing a second look up by way of the line map[key] = value in order to replace the default value created there by using the [] operator when a key is not present.
Is that true, and if so is there a way (perhaps by use of pointers or something) that I might only perform one look up in any case (perhaps by storing the address of where to place a value/read a value from) and still achieve the same functionality? Obviously this would be a useful efficiency improvement if so.
Here is the modified code excerpt:
int stored_val = map[key]; // first look up. Does this wrap ->find()??
// return the corresponding value if we find the key in the map - ie != 0
if (stored_val) return stored_val;
// if not in map
map[key] = value;
/* second (unnecessary?) look up here to find position for newly
added key entry */
return value;