Map
The ability to map objects to other objects can be an immensely powerful way to solve programming problems. For example, consider a program to examine the randomness of Java’s Random class. Ideally, Random would produce a perfect distribution of numbers, but to test this you need to generate many random numbers and count the ones that fall in the various ranges. A Map easily solves the problem; in this case, the key is the number produced by Random, and the value is the number of times that number appears:
//: holding/Statistics.java
// Simple demonstration of HashMap.
import java.util.*;
public class Statistics {
public static void main(String[] args) {
Random rand = new Random(47);
Map<Integer,Integer> m =
new HashMap<Integer,Integer>();
for(int i = 0; i < 10000; i++) {
// Produce a number between 0 and 20:
int r = rand.nextInt(20);
Integer freq = m.get(r);
m.put(r, freq == null ? 1 : freq + 1);
}
System.out.println(m);
}
} /* Output:
{15=497, 4=481, 19=464, 8=468, 11=531, 16=533, 18=478, 3=508, 7=471, 12=521, 17=509, 2=489, 13=506, 9=549, 6=519, 1=502, 14=477, 10=513, 5=503, 0=481}
*///:~
In main( ), autoboxing converts the randomly generated int into an Integer reference that can be used with the HashMap (you can’t use primitives with containers). The get( ) method returns null if the key is not already in the container (which means that this is the first time the number has been found). Otherwise, the get( ) method produces the associated Integer value for the key, which is incremented (again, autoboxing simplifies the expression but there are actually conversions to and from Integer taking place).
Here’s an example that allows you to use a String description to look up Pet objects. It also shows how you can test a Map to see if it contains a key or a value with containsKey( ) and containsValue( ):
//: holding/PetMap.java
import typeinfo.pets.*;
import java.util.*;
import static net.mindview.util.Print.*;
public class PetMap {
public static void main(String[] args) {
Map<String,Pet> petMap = new HashMap<String,Pet>();
petMap.put("My Cat", new Cat("Molly"));
petMap.put("My Dog", new Dog("Ginger"));
petMap.put("My Hamster", new Hamster("Bosco"));
print(petMap);
Pet dog = petMap.get("My Dog");
print(dog);
print(petMap.containsKey("My Dog"));
print(petMap.containsValue(dog));
}
} /* Output:
{My Cat=Cat Molly, My Hamster=Hamster Bosco, My Dog=Dog Ginger}
Dog Ginger
true
true
*///:~
Maps, like arrays and Collections, can easily be expanded to multiple dimensions; you simply make a Map whose values are Maps (and the values of those Maps can be other containers, even other Maps). Thus, it’s quite easy to combine containers to quickly produce powerful data structures. For example, suppose you are keeping track of people who have multiple pets—all you need is a Map<Person, List<Pet>>:
//: holding/MapOfList.java
package holding;
import typeinfo.pets.*;
import java.util.*;
import static net.mindview.util.Print.*;
public class MapOfList {
public static Map<Person, List<? extends Pet>>
petPeople = new HashMap<Person, List<? extends Pet>>();
static {
petPeople.put(new Person("Dawn"),
Arrays.asList(new Cymric("Molly"),new Mutt("Spot")));
petPeople.put(new Person("Kate"),
Arrays.asList(new Cat("Shackleton"),
new Cat("Elsie May"), new Dog("Margrett")));
petPeople.put(new Person("Marilyn"),
Arrays.asList(
new Pug("Louie aka Louis Snorkelstein Dupree"),
new Cat("Stanford aka Stinky el Negro"),
new Cat("Pinkola")));
petPeople.put(new Person("Luke"),
Arrays.asList(new Rat("Fuzzy"), new Rat("Fizzy")));
petPeople.put(new Person("Isaac"),
Arrays.asList(new Rat("Freckly")));
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
print("People: " + petPeople.keySet());
print("Pets: " + petPeople.values());
for(Person person : petPeople.keySet()) {
print(person + " has:");
for(Pet pet : petPeople.get(person))
print(" " + pet);
}
}
} /* Output:
People: [Person Luke, Person Marilyn, Person Isaac, Person Dawn, Person Kate]
Pets: [[Rat Fuzzy, Rat Fizzy], [Pug Louie aka Louis Snorkelstein Dupree, Cat Stanford aka Stinky el Negro, Cat Pinkola], [Rat Freckly], [Cymric Molly, Mutt Spot], [Cat Shackleton, Cat Elsie May, Dog Margrett]]
Person Luke has:
Rat Fuzzy
Rat Fizzy
Person Marilyn has:
Pug Louie aka Louis Snorkelstein Dupree
Cat Stanford aka Stinky el Negro
Cat Pinkola
Person Isaac has:
Rat Freckly
Person Dawn has:
Cymric Molly
Mutt Spot
Person Kate has:
Cat Shackleton
Cat Elsie May
Dog Margrett
*///:~
A Map can return a Set of its keys, a Collection of its values, or a Set of its pairs. The keySet( ) method produces a Set of all the keys in petPeople, which is used in the foreach statement to iterate through the Map.
[Thinking in Java, 295]
