Golang map internal implementation - how does it search the map for a key?

Question

I\'ve read in "The Go Programming Language" that a "given key can be retrieved ... using a constant number of key comparisons on average, no matter how large

Answer 1

The native map type uses a hash table implementation. It uses a hashing function on the key to generate an index into an array of data. Thus, generally, most actions occur in O(1) time. This is only generally true as some keys can result in the same index when hashed, called a collision, which then must be handled specially.

Hash tables are cool!