.NET data structures: ArrayList, List, HashTable,

Question

.NET has a lot of complex data structures. Unfortunately, some of them are quite similar, and I'm not always sure when to use one and when to use another. Most of my C# and Visual Basic books talk about them to a certain extent, but they never really go into any real detail.

What's the difference between Array, ArrayList, List, Hashtable, Dictionary, SortedList, and SortedDictionary?

Which ones are enumerable (IList -- can do 'foreach' loops)? Which ones use key/value pairs (IDict)?

What about memory footprint? Insertion speed? Retrieval speed?

Are there any other data structures worth mentioning?

I'm still searching for more details on memory usage and speed (Big-O notation).

Answer 1

If at all possible, use generics. This includes:

• List instead of ArrayList
• Dictionary instead of HashTable

Answer 2

.NET data structures:

More to conversation about why ArrayList and List are actually different

Arrays

As one user states, Arrays are the "old school" collection (yes, arrays are considered a collection though not part of System.Collections). But, what is "old school" about arrays in comparison to other collections, i.e the ones you have listed in your title (here, ArrayList and List(Of T))? Let's start with the basics by looking at Arrays.

To start, Arrays in Microsoft .NET are, "mechanisms that allow you to treat several [logically-related] items as a single collection," (see linked article). What does that mean? Arrays store individual members (elements) sequentially, one after the other in memory with a starting address. By using the array, we can easily access the sequentially stored elements beginning at that address.

Beyond that and contrary to programming 101 common conceptions, Arrays really can be quite complex:

Arrays can be single dimension, multidimensional, or jadded (jagged arrays are worth reading about). Arrays themselves are not dynamic: once initialized, an array of n size reserves enough space to hold n number of objects. The number of elements in the array cannot grow or shrink. Dim _array As Int32() = New Int32(100) reserves enough space on the memory block for the array to contain 100 Int32 primitive type objects (in this case, the array is initialized to contain 0s). The address of this block is returned to _array.

According to the article, Common Language Specification (CLS) requires that all arrays be zero-based. Arrays in .NET support non-zero-based arrays; however, this is less common. As a result of the "common-ness" of zero-based arrays, Microsoft has spent a lot of time optimizing their performance; therefore, single dimension, zero-based (SZs) arrays are "special" - and really the best implementation of an array (as opposed to multidimensional, etc.) - because SZs have specific intermediary language instructions for manipulating them.

Arrays are always passed by reference (as a memory address) - an important piece of the Array puzzle to know. While they do bounds checking (will throw an error), bounds checking can also be disabled on arrays.

Again, the biggest hindrance to arrays is that they are not re-sizable. They have a "fixed" capacity. Introducing ArrayList and List(Of T) to our history:

ArrayList - non-generic list

The ArrayList (along with List(Of T) - though there are some critical differences, here, explained later) - is perhaps best thought of as the next addition to collections (in the broad sense). ArrayList inherit from the IList (a descendant of 'ICollection') interface. ArrayLists, themselves, are bulkier - requiring more overhead - than Lists.

IList does enable the implementation to treat ArrayLists as fixed-sized lists (like Arrays); however, beyond the additional functionallity added by ArrayLists, there are no real advantages to using ArrayLists that are fixed size as ArrayLists (over Arrays) in this case are markedly slower.

From my reading, ArrayLists cannot be jagged: "Using multidimensional arrays as elements... is not supported". Again, another nail in the coffin of ArrayLists. ArrayLists are also not "typed" - meaning that, underneath everything, an ArrayList is simply a dynamic Array of Objects: Object[]. This requires a lot of boxing (implicit) and unboxing (explicit) when implementing ArrayLists, again adding to their overhead.

Unsubstantiated thought: I think I remember either reading or having heard from one of my professors that ArrayLists are sort of the bastard conceptual child of the attempt to move from Arrays to List-type Collections, i.e. while once having been a great improvement to Arrays, they are no longer the best option as further development has been done with respect to collections

List(Of T): What ArrayList became (and hoped to be)

The difference in memory usage is significant enough to where a List(Of Int32) consumed 56% less memory than an ArrayList containing the same primitive type (8 MB vs. 19 MB in the above gentleman's linked demonstration: again, linked here) - though this is a result compounded by the 64-bit machine. This difference really demonstrates two things: first (1), a boxed Int32-type "object" (ArrayList) is much bigger than a pure Int32 primitive type (List); second (2), the difference is exponential as a result of the inner-workings of a 64-bit machine.

So, what's the difference and what is a List(Of T)? MSDN defines a List(Of T) as, "... a strongly typed list of objects that can be accessed by index." The importance here is the "strongly typed" bit: a List(Of T) 'recognizes' types and stores the objects as their type. So, an Int32 is stored as an Int32 and not an Object type. This eliminates the issues caused by boxing and unboxing.

MSDN specifies this difference only comes into play when storing primitive types and not reference types. Too, the difference really occurs on a large scale: over 500 elements. What's more interesting is that the MSDN documentation reads, "It is to your advantage to use the type-specific implementation of the List(Of T) class instead of using the ArrayList class...."

Essentially, List(Of T) is ArrayList, but better. It is the "generic equivalent" of ArrayList. Like ArrayList, it is not guaranteed to be sorted until sorted (go figure). List(Of T) also has some added functionality.

Answer 3

Hashtables/Dictionaries are O(1) performance, meaning that performance is not a function of size. That's important to know.

EDIT: In practice, the average time complexity for Hashtable/Dictionary<> lookups is O(1).

Answer 4

An important note about Hashtable vs Dictionary for high frequency systematic trading engineering: Thread Safety Issue

Hashtable is thread safe for use by multiple threads. Dictionary public static members are thread safe, but any instance members are not guaranteed to be so.

So Hashtable remains the 'standard' choice in this regard.

Answer 5

A good cheat sheet mentioning the complexities for data structures, algorithms, etc.

Answer 6

First, all collections in .NET implement IEnumerable.

Second, a lot of the collections are duplicates because generics were added in version 2.0 of the framework.

So, although the generic collections likely add features, for the most part:

• List is a generic implementation of ArrayList.
• Dictionary is a generic implementation of Hashtable

Arrays are a fixed size collection that you can change the value stored at a given index.

SortedDictionary is an IDictionary that is sorted based on the keys. SortedList is an IDictionary that is sorted based on a required IComparer.

So, the IDictionary implementations (those supporting KeyValuePairs) are: * Hashtable * Dictionary * SortedList * SortedDictionary

Another collection that was added in .NET 3.5 is the Hashset. It is a collection that supports set operations.

Also, the LinkedList is a standard linked-list implementation (the List is an array-list for faster retrieval).