Re: Using char[] as key in a HashMap

Avinash,

Sorry for being a PITA but unless you want us to give folksy wisdom  
such as "apple pies are a good thing" you will need to provide a lot  
more data to answer the question:

How big do you expect the hash to be? (number of elements)
Are the strings random or meaningful (clustered)?
How long are the strings?
Is the access pattern read-mostly?

and even ..

Will the hash be (heavily) accessed from multiple threads such that  
contention is expected?
Is it a server side or client side application?
Is response time or throughput most important?

Peter

On Jan 30, 2008, at 2:24 AM, Avinash Lakshman wrote:

> Hi All
>
> In the application that we are building we have the need to maintain  
> some objects in memory in a HashMap keyed by a String. But it seems  
> that the overhead of the String is such that the overhead is more  
> than the length of the characters in the String. I was thinking of  
> reducing the memory footprint significantly by replacing the key  
> with a char[] of the String. How can I achieve this? How can I  
> implement the hashCode() and equals() of char[]? Do I have to do it  
> with a class that wraps the char[]?
>
> Thanks
> A
>
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