#  Tuesday, January 08, 2008
Posted in  | 

We all know how useful a hash table can be, but if you are using the .NET Framework 2.0 you should be using a Dictionary instead. A dictionary and a hash table in .NET 2.0 are very similar but with 1 main difference, a dictionary is faster because it does not need to box and unbox the data as a hash table would.

 

I made a simple program to see just how much faster a dictionary is than a hash table. I ran the test 20 times for each data set and the results were close each time. A GUID as the key and a boolean as the data.

This is the results of the last test for each dataset.

Time in Milliseconds for 100,000 keys Dictionary Hash Table
Inserting 34.41264 76.0970
Reading 18.9005 31.1648
Deleting 21.2474 30.4655

 

Time in Seconds for 10,000,000 keys Dictionary Hash Table
Inserting 6.5704143 26.9096540
Reading 3.1362891 5.6670613
Deleting 3.4623316 4.8830676

 

My comp specs

Vista Business 32bit, AMD 64 x2 5000+, 2GB ram

 

and now for the code I used. You can also download the project.  

 

using System;
using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Diagnostics;
 
namespace hashVsDictionary
{
    internal class Program
    {
        private static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            #region init
 
            int num = 10000000;
            Guid[] guids = new Guid[num];
 
            Stopwatch s = new Stopwatch();
            s.Start();
 
            for (int i = 0; i < num; i++)
            {
                guids[i] = Guid.NewGuid();
            }
 
            s.Stop();
            Console.WriteLine("Data Creation = " + s.Elapsed);
            s.Reset();
 
            #endregion
 
            #region hash
 
            Hashtable hash = new Hashtable();
            s.Start();
            for (int i = 0; i < num; i++)
            {
                hash.Add(guids[i], true);
            }
            s.Stop();
            Console.WriteLine("Insert Hash = " + s.Elapsed);
            s.Reset();
 
            s.Start();
            for (int i = 0; i < num; i++)
            {
                bool b = Convert.ToBoolean(hash[guids[i]]);
            }
            Console.WriteLine("Extracting Hash = " + s.Elapsed);
            s.Reset();
 
            s.Start();
            for (int i = 0; i < num; i++)
            {
                hash.Remove(guids[i]);
            }
 
            Console.WriteLine("Removing Hash = " + s.Elapsed);
            s.Reset();
 
            #endregion
 
            #region dict
 
            Dictionary<Guid, bool> dict = new Dictionary<Guid, bool>();
            s.Start();
            for (int i = 0; i < num; i++)
            {
                dict.Add(guids[i], true);
            }
            s.Stop();
            Console.WriteLine("Insert Dictionary = " + s.Elapsed);
            s.Reset();
 
            s.Start();
            for (int i = 0; i < num; i++)
            {
                bool b = dict[guids[i]];
            }
            Console.WriteLine("Extracting Dict = " + s.Elapsed);
            s.Reset();
 
            s.Start();
            for (int i = 0; i < num; i++)
            {
                dict.Remove(guids[i]);
            }
            Console.WriteLine("Removing Dict = " + s.Elapsed);
            s.Reset();
 
            #endregion
 
            Console.ReadLine();
        }
    }
}
Tuesday, January 08, 2008 2:18:33 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)   #     Comments [2] -

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Chris Newman
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