Having a scripting background, I perceive them as similar, but I sought to understand their precise distinctions. Unfortunately, my research didn’t yield much clarity.
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Having a scripting background, I perceive them as similar, but I sought to understand their precise distinctions. Unfortunately, my research didn’t yield much clarity.
"Dictionary" is the abstract concept or name of the data structure, while a hashtable is one of the possible implementations of a dictionary.
“Dictionary” is the abstract concept or name of the data structure, while a hashtable is one of the possible implementations of a dictionary.
See lessIn programming, Hash is often used as an abbreviation for HashTable, which is a data structure. However, this naming convention can be misleading as it focuses on the implementation details rather than the interface. On the other hand, Dictionary refers to the interface, which is an associative container mapping keys (usually unique) to values (not necessarily unique). A hash table is one possible implementation of a dictionary, offering efficient access characteristics in terms of runtime. In a hash table implementation: Keys must be hashable and equality comparable. Entries appear in no particular order in the dictionary. Key properties of a hash table implementation include the ability to compute a numeric value from a key (hashable) which is then used as an index in an array. Additionally, there are alternative implementations of the dictionary data structure that impose an ordering on keys, known as a sorted dictionary. This is often implemented using a search tree, among other efRead more
In programming, Hash is often used as an abbreviation for HashTable, which is a data structure. However, this naming convention can be misleading as it focuses on the implementation details rather than the interface.
On the other hand, Dictionary refers to the interface, which is an associative container mapping keys (usually unique) to values (not necessarily unique).
A hash table is one possible implementation of a dictionary, offering efficient access characteristics in terms of runtime. In a hash table implementation:
Key properties of a hash table implementation include the ability to compute a numeric value from a key (hashable) which is then used as an index in an array.
Additionally, there are alternative implementations of the dictionary data structure that impose an ordering on keys, known as a sorted dictionary. This is often implemented using a search tree, among other efficient methods.
In summary, a dictionary is an abstract data type (ADT) that maps keys to values. Various implementations exist, with the hash table being one such implementation. Despite the common use of the term “Hash,” it essentially refers to a dictionary implemented using a hash table.
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