added compliance section for concurrent hashmap

This commit is contained in:
joaquintides 2023-05-13 19:28:43 +02:00
parent 4b4db3dfb3
commit add01e2dfd

View File

@ -144,4 +144,61 @@ The main differences with C++ unordered associative containers are:
** Pointer stability is not kept under rehashing.
** There is no API for node extraction/insertion.
== Concurrent Hashmap
There is currently no specification in the C++ standard for this or any other concurrent
data structure. `boost::concurrent_flat_map` takes the same template parameters as `std::unordered_map`
and all the maps provided by Boost.Unordered, and its API is modelled after that of
`boost::unordered_flat_map` with the crucial difference that iterators are not provided
due to their inherent problems in concurrent scenarios (high contention, prone to deadlocking):
so, `boost::concurrent_flat_map` is technically not a
https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/named_req/Container[Container^], although
it meets all the requirements of https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/named_req/AllocatorAwareContainer[AllocatorAware^]
containers except those implying iterators.
In a non-concurrent unordered container, iterators serve two main purposes:
* Access to an element previously located via lookup.
* Container traversal.
In place of iterators, `boost::unordered_flat_map` uses _internal visitation_
facilities as a thread-safe substitute. Classical operations returning an iterator to an
element already existing in the container, like for instance:
[source,c++]
----
iterator find(const key_type& k);
std::pair<iterator, bool> insert(const value_type& obj);
----
are transformed to accept a _visitation function_ that is passed such element:
[source,c++]
----
template<class F> size_t visit(const key_type& k, F f);
template<class F> bool insert_or_visit(const value_type& obj, F f);
----
(In the second case `f` is only invoked if there's an equivalent element
to `obj` in the table, not if insertion is successful). Container traversal
is served by:
[source,c++]
----
template<class F> size_t visit_all(F f);
----
of which there are parallelized version in C++17 compilers with parallel
algorithm support. In general, the interface of `boost::concurrent_flat_map`
is derived from that of `boost::unordered_flat_map` by a fairly straightforward
process of replacing iterators with visitation where applicable. If
`iterator` and `const_iterator` provide mutable and const access to elements,
respectively, here visitation is granted mutable or const access depending on
the constness of the member function used (there are also `*cvisit` overloads for
explicit const visitation).
The one notable operation not provided is `operator[]`/`at`, which can be
replaced, if in a more convoluted manner, by
xref:#concurrent_flat_map_try_emplace_or_cvisit[`try_emplace_or_visit`].
//-