Suppose I have a type whose values I want to store in a std::unordered_set
that looks like this:
struct S {
int key; // key is conceptually a part of S and S needs access to it.
int data;
bool operator==(S const& rhs) const { return key == rhs.key; }
bool operator==(int key) const { return this->key == key; }
};
and an accompanying hasher
struct SHash {
using is_transparent = void;
// Assume std::hash<int> is the identity function.
size_t operator()(S const& s) const { return s.key; }
size_t operator()(int key) const { return key; }
};
Now I can lookup values in the hashtable by their keys:
int main() {
std::unordered_set<S, SHash, std::equal_to<>> s;
s.insert(S{ .key = 0, .data = 1 });
s.insert(S{ .key = 1, .data = 2 });
assert(s.find(0)->data == 1);
}
However I cannot change the values in the hashtable:
s.find(0)->data = 3; // Does not compile
This is expected and makes a lot of sense since changing the key would corrupt the hashtable and the returned iterator cannot know what my key is or what my hasher is actually hashing.
Now if I need to modify the rest of the S
object, I can either
use std::unordered_map
(which internally is more or less an unordered_set
of std::pair
's) and accept to store the key twice
cast away const-ness of the reference returned by .find()
and just hope that I will always remember not to change the key. I'm pretty certain that const_cast
used like that would be legal as long as I don't change the key, but it feels really sketchy.
Edit: const_cast
is definitely not legal because it violates the contract mandated by the standard library. I'm just really certain that despite that everything would compile and run just fine.
Both options aren't really beautiful. Are there any other solutions to this problem?
Note that using operator==
like this isn't really best practice and just done to keep the example terse.
Play around with the code on Godbolt if you like.
You cannot modify elements in the unordered_set
. Even with non const iterators you cannot modify them. I am not sure if they are const
but in any case they are effectively constant. You cannot modify them. From cppreference:
Container elements may not be modified (even by non const iterators) since modification could change an element's hash and corrupt the container.
What you want to do can be done via std::unodered_set::extract
. The example from cppreference:
#include <algorithm> #include <iostream> #include <string_view> #include <unordered_set> void print(std::string_view comment, const auto& data) { std::cout << comment; for (auto datum : data) std::cout << ' ' << datum; std::cout << '\n'; } int main() { std::unordered_set<int> cont{1, 2, 3}; print("Start:", cont); // Extract node handle and change key auto nh = cont.extract(1); nh.value() = 4; print("After extract and before insert:", cont); // Insert node handle back cont.insert(std::move(nh)); print("End:", cont); }
You cannot modify the elements in the container, but you can extract it, modify, and insert back in.