How to count collisions in unordered_set c++ [duplicate]

Question

I want to calculate some stats about my hash function (like max/avg amount of collision). I wrote dummy hash function (which mapped all keys to 1) and waited to see number of max/avg collisions equal to amount of keys. But I have equal numbers for different functions. Can someone explain this? Code:

#include <iostream>
#include <unordered_set>

struct DummyHash
{
    size_t operator()(int key) const
    {
        return static_cast<size_t>(1);
    }
};

int main()
{
    std::unordered_set<int, DummyHash> a;
    std::unordered_set<int> b;
    int c = 10000;

    for (int i = 0; i < c; i++)
    {
        a.insert(i);
    }
    std::cout << "a ended" << std::endl;

    for (int i = 0; i < c; i++)
    {
        b.insert(i);
    }

    std::cout << "b ended" << std::endl;

    std::cout << "a = " << a.max_load_factor() << ' ' << a.load_factor() << ' '
        << a.max_size() << ' ' << a.max_bucket_count() << ' ' << a.bucket_count() << '\n';
    std::cout << "b = " << b.max_load_factor() << ' ' << b.load_factor() << ' '
        << b.max_size() << ' ' << b.max_bucket_count() << ' ' << b.bucket_count() << '\n';
    return 0;
}

Result:

a ended
b ended
a = 1 0.659065 768614336404564650 768614336404564650 15173
b = 1 0.659065 1152921504606846975 1152921504606846975 15173

Answer 1

std::unordered_map will increase bucket_count in an attempt to keep load_factor near max_load_factor.

That means that bucket_count depends only on the number of elements in the map, and is unaffected by the number of collisions.

To check for collisions, count all elements that have a bucket size > 1.

size_t collisions = 0, empty = 0;
for (auto bucket = a.bucket_count(); bucket--;) {
    if (a.bucket_size(bucket) == 0)
        empty++;
    else
        collisions += a.bucket_size(bucket) - 1;
}
std::cout << "a = " << a.max_load_factor() << ' ' << a.load_factor() << ' '
    << ' ' << a.bucket_count() << ' ' << collisions << ' ' << empty << '\n';
empty = 0, collisions = 0;
for (auto bucket = b.bucket_count(); bucket--;) {
    if (b.bucket_size(bucket) == 0)
        empty++;
    else
        collisions += b.bucket_size(bucket) - 1;
}
std::cout << "b = " << b.max_load_factor() << ' ' << b.load_factor() << ' '
    << ' ' << b.bucket_count() << ' ' << collisions << ' ' << empty << '\n';

Prints

a = 1 0.610352  16384 9999 16383
b = 1 0.610352  16384 4773 11157

That is, with a bad hashing function there are 9999 collisions and 16383 out of 16384 empty buckets.

---

Unrelated: if you care about hash table performance, have a look at dense_hash_map, which implements linear probing for much better performance.

Answer 2

The functions you use do not provide collision counts, you may like to read their documentation on https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/container/unordered_set

One way to calculate the bucket collision statistics is to examine the number of elements in each bucket:

struct BucketStats {
    size_t occupied = 0;
    size_t total_collisions = 0;
    size_t max_collisions = 0;

    template<class... Args>
    BucketStats(std::unordered_set<Args...> const& c)
    {
        for(auto bucket = c.bucket_count(); bucket--;) {
            auto bucket_size = c.bucket_size(bucket);
            occupied += bucket_size > 0;
            if(bucket_size > 1) {
                auto collisions = bucket_size - 1;
                total_collisions += collisions;
                max_collisions = std::max(max_collisions, collisions);
            }
        }
    }

    double avg_collisions() const {
        return occupied ? static_cast<double>(total_collisions) / occupied : 0;
    }

    friend std::ostream& operator<<(std::ostream& s, BucketStats const& b) {
        return s
            << "used buckets: " << b.occupied
            << "; total collisions: " << b.total_collisions
            << "; max collisions in a bucket: " << b.max_collisions
            << "; avg collisions per bucket: " << b.avg_collisions()
            ;
    }
};

// ...

    std::cout << BucketStats(a) << '\n';
    std::cout << BucketStats(b) << '\n';

Outputs:

used buckets: 1; total collisions: 9999; max collisions in a bucket: 9999; avg collisions per bucket: 9999
used buckets: 10000; total collisions: 0; max collisions in a bucket: 0; avg collisions per bucket: 0