Java: Need a hash Map where one supplies a function to do the hashing

Question

I would like to know of a Map that works like a regular HashMap/Hashtable except it takes a function which returns the hashcode and performs the equality test rather than letting the HashMap use Object.hashCode/equals.

I cant use TreeMap because the objects do not implement Comparable and there is no stable way to handle the case of unequal objects. One cannot use System.identityHashCode because there is the potential for conflicts for objects that are not equal.

Ideally it would be great if the Map took a function in a similar way one can supply a custom Comparator to a TreeMap rather than letting the TreeMap cast parameters to Comparable.

The only way around this problem is to wrap each key and have the wrapper do the custom hashing/equals but surely therse a better way.

Answer 1

Did you consider a simple wrapper around the objects you would like to cache?

class Wrapper {
   YourObject object;

   public boolean equals(Object someOther) {
   ...
   }
   public int hashCode() {
   }
}

Answer 2

As other answers suggest wrapping your objects with an object with the desired hashCode and equals is generally the best way to go. If on the rare case you want the function to be to use the original equals and hashCode implementation on Object there actually is IdentityHashMap for that very use case. However I appreciate the function you want is likely something than this.