How can I make an unordered set of pairs of integers in C++?

Question

The following program does not compile an unordered set of pairs of integers, but it does for integers. Can unordered_set and its member functions be used on us

Answer 1

The other answers here all suggest building a hash function that somehow combines your two integers.

This will work, but produces non-unique hashes. Though this is fine for your use of unordered_set, for some applications it may be unacceptable. In your case, if you happen to choose a bad hash function, it may lead to many unnecessary collisions.

But you can produce unique hashes!

int is usually 4 bytes. You could make this explicit by using int32_t.

The hash's datatype is std::size_t. On most machines, this is 8 bytes. You can check this upon compilation.

Since a pair consists of two int32_t types, you can put both numbers into an std::size_t to make a unique hash.

That looks like this (I can't recall offhandedly how to force the compiler to treat a signed value as though it were unsigned for bit-manipulation, so I've written the following for uint32_t.):

#include <cassert>
#include <cstdint>
#include <unordered_set>
#include <utility>


struct IntPairHash {
  std::size_t operator()(const std::pair<uint32_t, uint32_t> &p) const {
    assert(sizeof(std::size_t)>=8);  //Ensure that std::size_t, the type of the hash, is large enough
    //Shift first integer over to make room for the second integer. The two are
    //then packed side by side.
    return (((uint64_t)p.first)<<32) | ((uint64_t)p.second);
  }
};

int main(){
  std::unordered_set< std::pair<uint32_t, uint32_t>, IntPairHash> uset;
  uset.emplace(10,20);
  uset.emplace(20,30);
  uset.emplace(10,20);
  assert(uset.size()==2);
}

Answer 2

The problem is that std::unordered_set is using std::hash template to compute hashes for its entries and there is no std::hash specialization for pairs. So you will have to do two things:

1. Decide what hash function you want to use.
2. Specialize std::hash for your key type (std::pair<int, int>) using that function.

Here is a simple example:

#include <unordered_set>

namespace std {
template <> struct hash<std::pair<int, int>> {
    inline size_t operator()(const std::pair<int, int> &v) const {
        std::hash<int> int_hasher;
        return int_hasher(v.first) ^ int_hasher(v.second);
    }
};

}

int main()
{
    std::unordered_set< std::pair<int, int> > edge;
}

Answer 3

As already mentioned in most of the other answers on this question, you need to provide a hash function for std::pair<int, int>. However, since C++11, you can also use a lambda expression instead of defining a hash function. The following code takes the solution given by dasblinkenlight as basis:

auto hash = [](const std::pair<int, int>& p){ return p.first * 31 + p.second; };
std::unordered_set<std::pair<int, int>, decltype(hash)> u_edge_(8, hash);

Code on Ideone

I'd like repeat dasblinkenlight's disclaimer: This solution is limited to a pair of two integers. This answer provides the idea for a more general solution.

Answer 4

OK here is a simple solution with guaranteed non collisions. Simply reduce your problem to an existing solution i.e. convert your pair of int to string like so:

 auto stringify = [](const pair<int, int>& p, string sep = "-")-> string{
    return to_string(p.first) + sep + to_string(p.second);
 }

 unordered_set<string> myset;
 myset.insert(stringify(make_pair(1, 2)));
 myset.insert(stringify(make_pair(3, 4)));
 myset.insert(stringify(make_pair(5, 6)));

Enjoy!

Answer 5

There is no standard way of computing a hash on a pair. Add this definition to your file:

struct pair_hash {
    inline std::size_t operator()(const std::pair<int,int> & v) const {
        return v.first*31+v.second;
    }
};

Now you can use it like this:

std::unordered_set< std::pair<int, int>,  pair_hash> u_edge_;

This works, because pair<T1,T2> defines equality. For custom classes that do not provide a way to test equality you may need to provide a separate function to test if two instances are equal to each other.

Of course this solution is limited to a pair of two integers. Here is a link to an answer that helps you define a more general way of making hash for multiple objects.

Answer 6

Your code compiles on VS2010 SP1 (VC10), but it fails to compile with GCC g++ 4.7.2.

However, you may want to consider boost::hash from Boost.Functional to hash a std::pair (with this addition, your code compiles also with g++).

#include <unordered_set>
#include <boost/functional/hash.hpp>

class A
{
private: 
    std::unordered_set< 
        std::pair<int, int>, 
        boost::hash< std::pair<int, int> > 
    > u_edge_;
};