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the Add method, which adds a key and value and throws an exception if the key already exists in the dictionary; assigning to the indexer, which overwrites any existing value, if present; and assigning to the backing property of the indexer, for which the indexer is syntactic sugar (not applicable to C#, see F# or VB.NET examples).
It is also possible to delete a key from an association list, by scanning the list to find each occurrence of the key and splicing the nodes containing the key out of the list. [1] The scan should continue to the end of the list, even when the key is found, in case the same key may have been inserted multiple times.
The order of enumeration is key-independent and is instead based on the order of insertion. This is the case for the "ordered dictionary" in .NET Framework, the LinkedHashMap of Java and Python. [17] [18] [19] The latter is more common.
Hashing is an example of a space-time tradeoff. If memory is infinite, the entire key can be used directly as an index to locate its value with a single memory access. On the other hand, if infinite time is available, values can be stored without regard for their keys, and a binary search or linear search can be used to retrieve the element.
The NIST Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures [1] is a reference work maintained by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology. It defines a large number of terms relating to algorithms and data structures. For algorithms and data structures not necessarily mentioned here, see list of algorithms and list of data structures.
Python dictionaries (a form of associative array) can also be directly iterated over, when the dictionary keys are returned; or the items() method of a dictionary can be iterated over where it yields corresponding key,value pairs as a tuple:
Python makes a distinction between lists and tuples. Lists are written as [1, 2, 3], are mutable, and cannot be used as the keys of dictionaries (dictionary keys must be immutable in Python). Tuples, written as (1, 2, 3), are immutable and thus can be used as keys of dictionaries, provided all of the tuple's elements are immutable.
One may also use a sentinel node at the end of the list, with an appropriate data field, to eliminate some end-of-list tests. For example, when scanning the list looking for a node with a given value x, setting the sentinel's data field to x makes it unnecessary to test for end-of-list inside the loop. Another example is the merging two sorted ...