HashMap get/put complexity
We are used to saying that
HashMapget/putget/putAvailable memory is another issue. As I understand from the javadocs, the
HashMapload factorload factorSo, it looks like O(1) is not guaranteed. Does it make sense or am I missing something ?
It depends on many things. It's usually O(1), with a decent hash which itself is constant time... but you could have a hash which takes a long time to compute, and if there are multiple items in the hash map which return the same hash code, get will have to iterate over them calling equals on each of them to find a match.
In the worst case, a HashMap has an O(n) lookup. Fortunately, that worst case scenario doesn't come up very often in real life, in my experience. So no, O(1) certainly isn't guaranteed - but it's usually what you should assume when considering which algorithms and data structures to use.
And yes, if you don't have enough memory for the hash map, you'll be in trouble... but that's going to be true whatever data structure you use.