What is the preferred/idiomatic way to insert into a map?

Question

I have identified four different ways of inserting elements into a std::map:

std::map function;

function[0] = 42;
function.inse         


        

Answer 1

Since C++17 std::map offers two new insertion methods: insert_or_assign() and try_emplace(), as also mentioned in the comment by sp2danny.

insert_or_assign()

Basically, insert_or_assign() is an "improved" version of operator[]. In contrast to operator[], insert_or_assign() doesn't require the map's value type to be default constructible. For example, the following code doesn't compile, because MyClass does not have a default constructor:

class MyClass {
public:
    MyClass(int i) : m_i(i) {};
    int m_i;
};

int main() {
    std::map myMap;

    // VS2017: "C2512: 'MyClass::MyClass' : no appropriate default constructor available"
    // Coliru: "error: no matching function for call to 'MyClass::MyClass()"
    myMap[0] = MyClass(1);

    return 0;
}

However, if you replace myMap[0] = MyClass(1); by the following line, then the code compiles and the insertion takes place as intended:

myMap.insert_or_assign(0, MyClass(1));

Moreover, similar to insert(), insert_or_assign() returns a pair. The Boolean value is true if an insertion occurred and false if an assignment was done. The iterator points to the element that was inserted or updated.

try_emplace()

Similar to the above, try_emplace() is an "improvement" of emplace(). In contrast to emplace(), try_emplace() doesn't modify its arguments if insertion fails due to a key already existing in the map. For example, the following code attempts to emplace an element with a key that is already stored in the map (see *):

int main() {
    std::map> myMap2;
    myMap2.emplace(0, std::make_unique(1));

    auto pMyObj = std::make_unique(2);    
    auto [it, b] = myMap2.emplace(0, std::move(pMyObj));  // *

    if (!b)
        std::cout << "pMyObj was not inserted" << std::endl;

    if (pMyObj == nullptr)
        std::cout << "pMyObj was modified anyway" << std::endl;
    else
        std::cout << "pMyObj.m_i = " << pMyObj->m_i <<  std::endl;

    return 0;
}

Output (at least for VS2017 and Coliru):

pMyObj was not inserted
pMyObj was modified anyway

As you can see, pMyObj no longer points to the original object. However, if you replace auto [it, b] = myMap2.emplace(0, std::move(pMyObj)); by the the following code, then the output looks different, because pMyObj remains unchanged:

auto [it, b] = myMap2.try_emplace(0, std::move(pMyObj));

Output:

pMyObj was not inserted
pMyObj pMyObj.m_i = 2

Code on Coliru

Please note: I tried to keep my explanations as short and simple as possible to fit them into this answer. For a more precise and comprehensive description, I recommend reading this article on Fluent C++.