LRU cache design

Question

Least Recently Used (LRU) Cache is to discard the least recently used items first How do you design and implement such a cache class? The design requirements are as follows:

Answer 1

Here is my implementation for a basic, simple LRU cache.

//LRU Cache
#include 
#include 

template 
class LRUCache
    {
    // Key access history, most recent at back
    typedef std::list List;

    // Key to value and key history iterator
    typedef unordered_map< K,
                           std::pair<
                                     V,
                                     typename std::list::iterator
                                    >
                         > Cache;

    typedef V (*Fn)(const K&);

public:
    LRUCache( size_t aCapacity, Fn aFn ) 
        : mFn( aFn )
        , mCapacity( aCapacity )
        {}

    //get value for key aKey
    V operator()( const K& aKey )
        {
        typename Cache::iterator it = mCache.find( aKey );
        if( it == mCache.end() ) //cache-miss: did not find the key
            {
            V v = mFn( aKey );
            insert( aKey, v );
            return v;
            }

        // cache-hit
        // Update access record by moving accessed key to back of the list
        mList.splice( mList.end(), mList, (it)->second.second );

        // return the retrieved value
        return (it)->second.first;
        }

private:
        // insert a new key-value pair in the cache
    void insert( const K& aKey, V aValue )
        {
        //method should be called only when cache-miss happens
        assert( mCache.find( aKey ) == mCache.end() );

        // make space if necessary
        if( mList.size() == mCapacity )
            {
            evict();
            }

        // record k as most-recently-used key
        typename std::list::iterator it = mList.insert( mList.end(), aKey );

        // create key-value entry, linked to the usage record
        mCache.insert( std::make_pair( aKey, std::make_pair( aValue, it ) ) );
        }

        //Purge the least-recently used element in the cache
    void evict()
        {
        assert( !mList.empty() );

        // identify least-recently-used key
        const typename Cache::iterator it = mCache.find( mList.front() );

        //erase both elements to completely purge record
        mCache.erase( it );
        mList.pop_front();
        }

private:
    List mList;
    Cache mCache;
    Fn mFn;
    size_t mCapacity;
    };