HashMap bug for large sizes

[David Holmes]

On 1/06/2012 11:36 PM, Doug Lea wrote:
> On 06/01/12 05:29, Kasper Nielsen wrote:
>>
>> I don't know if this has been discussed before. But I was looking at
>> the HashMap implementation today and noticed that there are some
>> issues with very large sized hashmaps with more then Integer.MAX_VALUE
>> elements.
>
> I think this arose on this list (or possibly some side-exchanges)
> three years ago when discussing possible HashMap improvements. It

Yes - see:

http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/core-libs-dev/2009-June/001859.html

as part of the "Faster Hashmap" discussion.

Also 6998187 was filed for this in November 2010, but it fell into a 
crack in the bug system. I just pulled it back out.

David
-----


> seems impossible to fix this without breaking serialization
> compatibility, so people seemed resigned to let the limitations
> remain until there was some change forcing incompatibility anyway.
> At the least though, an implementation note could be added to
> the javadocs. I think several other java.util classes also have
> this problem, but none of the java.util.concurrent ones do.
> So as a workaround, people can use ConcurrentHashMap even if
> they aren't using it concurrently.
>
> -Doug
>
>>
>> 1.
>> The Map contract says that "If the map contains more than
>> Integer.MAX_VALUE elements, returns Integer.MAX_VALUE." The current
>> implementation will just wrap around and return negative
>> numbers when you add elements (size++).
>>
>> 2.
>> If the size of a HashMap has wrapped around and returns negative size
>> you cannot deserialize it. Because of this loop in readObject
>> for (int i=0; i<size; i++) {
>> K key = (K) s.readObject();
>> V value = (V) s.readObject();
>> putForCreate(key, value);
>> }
>>
>> If someone wants to play around with the size limits of HashMap I
>> suggest taking the source code of HashMap and change the type of the
>> size field from an int to a short, in which case you can test this
>> with less the xx GB of heap.
>>
>> There are probably other map implementations in the JDK with the same
>> issues.
>>
>> Cheers
>> Kasper
>>
>