Converting System.Decimal to System.Guid

Question

I have a big dictionary where the key is decimal, but the GetHashCode() of System.Decimal is disasterously bad. To prove my guess, I ran a for loop with 100.000 neigboring decimals and checked the distribution. 100.000 different decimal numbers used only 2 (two!!!) different hashcodes.

Decimal is represented as 16 bytes. Just like Guid! But the GetHashCode() distribution of Guid is pretty good. How can I convert a decimal to Guid in C# as cheap as possible? Unsafe code is OK!

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EDIT: The test was requested, so here is the code:

decimal d = 96000000000000000000m;
Dictionary<int, int> hashcount = new Dictionary<int, int>();
int length = 100000;
for (int i = 0; i < length; i++)
{
    int hashcode = d.GetHashCode();
    int n;
    if (hashcount.TryGetValue(hashcode, out n))
    {
        hashcount[hashcode] = n + 1;
    }
    else
    {
        hashcount.Add(hashcode, 1);
    }
    d++;
}

Console.WriteLine(hashcount.Count);

This prints 7. I do not remember the starting decimal that gave me 2.

Answer 1

EXTREMELY HACKY SOLUTION (but probably fastest possible)

public static class Utils
{
    [StructLayout(LayoutKind.Explicit)]
    struct DecimalGuidConverter
    {
        [FieldOffset(0)]
        public decimal Decimal;
        [FieldOffset(0)]
        public Guid Guid;
    }

    private static DecimalGuidConverter _converter;
    public static Guid DecimalToGuid(decimal dec)
    {
        _converter.Decimal = dec;
        return _converter.Guid;
    }
    public static decimal GuidToDecimal(Guid guid)
    {
        _converter.Guid = guid;
        return _converter.Decimal;
    }
}

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// Prints 000e0000-0000-0000-8324-6ae7b91d0100
Console.WriteLine(Utils.DecimalToGuid((decimal) Math.PI));

// Prints 00000000-0000-0000-1821-000000000000
Console.WriteLine(Utils.DecimalToGuid(8472m));

// Prints 8472
Console.WriteLine(Utils.GuidToDecimal(Guid.Parse("00000000-0000-0000-1821-000000000000")));

Answer 2

If you're just trying to get a different hash algorithm, there's no need to convert to a Guid. Something like this:

public int GetDecimalHashCode(decimal value)
{
    int[] bits = decimal.GetBits(value);
    int hash = 17;
    foreach (int x in bits)
    {
        hash = hash * 31 + x;
    }
    return hash;
}

(Obviously substitute a different algorithm if you want.)

Admittedly this still involves creating an array, which isn't ideal. If you really want to create a Guid you could use the code above to get the bits and then a long Guid constructor passing in appropriate values from the array.

I'm somewhat suspicious of the decimal hashcode being so bad though. Do you have some sample code for that?