c++11 - What is the default hash function used in C++ std::unordered_map?

Question

I am using

unordered_map<string, int>

and

unordered_map<int, int>

What hash function is used in each case and what is chance of collision in each case? I will be inserting unique string and unique int as keys in each case respectively.

I am interested in knowing the algorithm of hash function in case of string and int keys and their collision stats.

Answer 1

The function object std::hash<> is used.

Standard specializations exist for all built-in types, and some other standard library types such as std::string and std::thread. See the link for the full list.

For other types to be used in a std::unordered_map, you will have to specialize std::hash<> or create your own function object.

The chance of collision is completely implementation-dependent, but considering the fact that integers are limited between a defined range, while strings are theoretically infinitely long, I'd say there is a much better chance for collision with strings.

As for the implementation in GCC, the specialization for builtin-types just returns the bit pattern. Here's how they are defined in bits/functional_hash.h:

  /// Partial specializations for pointer types.
  template<typename _Tp>
    struct hash<_Tp*> : public __hash_base<size_t, _Tp*>
    {
      size_t
      operator()(_Tp* __p) const noexcept
      { return reinterpret_cast<size_t>(__p); }
    };

  // Explicit specializations for integer types.
#define _Cxx_hashtable_define_trivial_hash(_Tp)     
  template<>                        
    struct hash<_Tp> : public __hash_base<size_t, _Tp>  
    {                                                   
      size_t                                            
      operator()(_Tp __val) const noexcept              
      { return static_cast<size_t>(__val); }            
    };

  /// Explicit specialization for bool.
  _Cxx_hashtable_define_trivial_hash(bool)

  /// Explicit specialization for char.
  _Cxx_hashtable_define_trivial_hash(char)

  /// ...

---

The specialization for std::string is defined as:

#ifndef _GLIBCXX_COMPATIBILITY_CXX0X
  /// std::hash specialization for string.
  template<>
    struct hash<string>
    : public __hash_base<size_t, string>
    {
      size_t
      operator()(const string& __s) const noexcept
      { return std::_Hash_impl::hash(__s.data(), __s.length()); }
    };

Some further search leads us to:

struct _Hash_impl
{
  static size_t
  hash(const void* __ptr, size_t __clength,
       size_t __seed = static_cast<size_t>(0xc70f6907UL))
  { return _Hash_bytes(__ptr, __clength, __seed); }
  ...
};
...
// Hash function implementation for the nontrivial specialization.
// All of them are based on a primitive that hashes a pointer to a
// byte array. The actual hash algorithm is not guaranteed to stay
// the same from release to release -- it may be updated or tuned to
// improve hash quality or speed.
size_t
_Hash_bytes(const void* __ptr, size_t __len, size_t __seed);

_Hash_bytes is an external function from libstdc++. A bit more searching led me to this file, which states:

// This file defines Hash_bytes, a primitive used for defining hash
// functions. Based on public domain MurmurHashUnaligned2, by Austin
// Appleby.  http://murmurhash.googlepages.com/

So the default hashing algorithm GCC uses for strings is MurmurHashUnaligned2.