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What issues should be considered when overriding equals and hashCode in Java?
(11 answers)
Why do I need to override the equals and hashCode methods in Java?
(31 answers)
Closed 9 years ago.
I read in many places saying while override equals method in Java, should override hashCode method too, otherwise it is "violating the contract".
But so far I haven't faced any problem if I override only equals method, but not hashCode method.
What is the contract? And why am I not facing any problem when I am violating the contract? In which case will I face a problem if I haven't overridden the hashCode method?
The problem you will have is with collections where unicity of elements is calculated according to both .equals() and .hashCode(), for instance keys in a HashMap.
As its name implies, it relies on hash tables, and hash buckets are a function of the object's .hashCode().
If you have two objects which are .equals(), but have different hash codes, you lose!
The part of the contract here which is important is: objects which are .equals() MUST have the same .hashCode().
This is all documented in the javadoc for Object. And Joshua Bloch says you must do it in Effective Java. Enough said.
According to the doc, the default implementation of hashCode will return some integer that differ for every object
As much as is reasonably practical, the hashCode method defined by class Object does
return distinct integers for distinct objects. (This is typically implemented by
converting the internal address of the object into an integer, but this implementation
technique is not required by the JavaTM programming language.)
However some time you want the hash code to be the same for different object that have the same meaning. For example
Student s1 = new Student("John", 18);
Student s2 = new Student("John", 18);
s1.hashCode() != s2.hashCode(); // With the default implementation of hashCode
This kind of problem will be occur if you use a hash data structure in the collection framework such as HashTable, HashSet. Especially with collection such as HashSet you will end up having duplicate element and violate the Set contract.
Yes, it should be overridden. If you think you need to override equals(), then you need to override hashCode() and vice versa. The general contract of hashCode() is:
Whenever it is invoked on the same object more than once during an execution of a Java application, the hashCode method must consistently return the same integer, provided no information used in equals comparisons on the object is modified. This integer need not remain consistent from one execution of an application to another execution of the same application.
If two objects are equal according to the equals(Object) method, then calling the hashCode method on each of the two objects must produce the same integer result.
It is not required that if two objects are unequal according to the equals(java.lang.Object) method, then calling the hashCode method on each of the two objects must produce distinct integer results. However, the programmer should be aware that producing distinct integer results for unequal objects may improve the performance of hashtables.
The contract is that if obj1.equals(obj2) then obj1.hashCode() == obj2.hashCode() , it is mainly for performance reasons, as maps are mainly using hashCode method to compare entries keys.
Have a look at Hashtables, Hashmaps, HashSets and so forth. They all store the hashed key as their keys. When invoking get(Object key) the hash of the parameter is generated and lookup in the given hashes.
When not overwriting hashCode() and the instance of the key has been changed (for example a simple string that doesn't matter at all), the hashCode() could result in 2 different hashcodes for the same object, resulting in not finding your given key in map.get().
See JavaDoc of java.lang.Object
In hashCode() it says:
If two objects are equal according to the equals(Object) method,
then calling the hashCode method on each of the two objects must
produce the same integer result.
(Emphasis by me).
If you only override equals() and not hashCode() your class violates this contract.
This is also said in the JavaDoc of the equals() method:
Note that it is generally necessary to override the hashCode method
whenever this method is overridden, so as to maintain the general
contract for the hashCode method, which states that equal objects must
have equal hash codes.
A contract is: If two objects are equal then they should have the same hashcode and if two objects are not equal then they may or may not have same hash code.
Try using your object as key in HashMap (edited after comment from joachim-sauer), and you will start facing trouble. A contract is a guideline, not something forced upon you.
Related
This question is asked by interviewer that most of answers related to hash code is used for bucketing where it checks equals to search objects.
Is there any other general use case or scenario, where hash code is beneficial and can be used in a routine program?
As recently I have used JPA where it throws exception "Composite-id class does not override hashCode()" but again it is used by implementation class of hibernate. Sly, what other places or scenario we can use hashcode other then collections especially scenario where you have used it yourself.
class a {
public int hashCode() {
}
}
class b {
public static void main(String[] str) {
//In what ways can i use hashcode here?
}
}
Let's say your class will not be used in any collection ever( which is very unlikely though), it will be used in more than one place and by other developers. Any developer using your class will expect that if two instances of that class are equal based on equals method, they should produce same hashCode value. This fundamental assumption will be broken if hashCode is not overridden to be consistent with equals and that will prevent their code to function properly.
From Effective Java , 3rd Edition :
ITEM 11: ALWAYS OVERRIDE HASHCODE WHEN YOU OVERRIDE EQUALS
You must override hashCode in every class that overrides equals. If
you fail to do so, your class will violate the general contract for
hashCode, which will prevent it from functioning properly in
collections such as HashMap and HashSet. Here is the contract, adapted
from the Object specification :
• When the hashCode method is invoked on an object repeatedly during
an execution of an application, it must consistently return the same
value, provided no information used in equals comparisons is modified.
This value need not remain consistent from one execution of an
application to another.
• If two objects are equal according to the equals(Object) method,
then calling hashCode on the two objects must produce the same integer
result.
• If two objects are unequal according to the equals(Object) method,
it is not required that calling hashCode on each of the objects must
produce distinct results. However, the programmer should be aware that
producing distinct results for unequal objects may improve the
performance of hash tables.
The key provision that is violated when you fail to override hashCode
is the second one: equal objects must have equal hash codes. Two
distinct instances may be logically equal according to a class’s
equals method, but to Object’s hashCode method, they’re just two
objects with nothing much in common. Therefore, Object’s hashCode
method returns two seemingly random numbers instead of two equal
numbers as required by the contract.
A small semantic mistake in the interview question. Hash code is not used to check equality, it's used to detect inequality. If hash codes are different the objects are guaranteed to be inequal. If the codes are equal the objects may be equal and need to be checked with the equals-method.
That said, if the hash code is cached, it could be used to speed up the equals method.
Suppose you only override equals but not hashCode
This means that hashCode is inherited from Object
Object.hashCode always tries to return different hash codes for different objects (regardless if they are equal or not)
This means that you may end up with different hash codes for two objects that you consider to be equal.
This in turn causes these two equal objects to end up in different buckets in hash based collections such as HashSet.
This causes such collections to break.
More reference: https://programming.guide/java/overriding-hashcode-and-equals.html
This question already has answers here:
Why do I need to override the equals and hashCode methods in Java?
(31 answers)
Closed 7 years ago.
I know that when we override equals() method then we need to override hashcode() as well and other way around.
But i don't understand why we MUST do that?
In Joshua Bloch Book it is clearly written that we must do that, because when we deal with hash based collections, it is crucial to satisfy the Hashcode contract and I admit that, but what if I am not dealing with hash-based collections?
Why is it still required ?
Why to Override Equals ?
A programmer who compares references to value objects using the equals
method expects to find out whether they are logically equivalent, not
whether they refer to the same object .
Now coming to HashCode
Hash function which is called to produce the hashCode should return the same hash code each and every time,
when function is applied on same or equal objects. In other words, two
equal objects must produce same hash code consistently.
Implementation of HashCode provided by Object Class is not based upon logical equivalency ,
So Now if you will not override hashCode but override equals, then according to you 2 Objects are equals as they will pass the equals() test but according to Java they are not .
Consequences :
Set start allowing duplicates !!!
Map#get(key) will not return the correct value !!
and so on many other consquences..................
Data structures, such as HashMap, depend on the contract.
A HashMap achieves magical performance properties by using the hashcode to bucketize entries. Every item that is put in the map that has the same hashcode() value gets placed in the same bucket. These "collisions" are resolved by comparing within the same bucket using equals(). In other words, the hashcode is used to determine the subset of the items in the map that might be equal and in this way quickly eliminate the vast majority of the items from further consideration.
This only works if objects that are equal are placed in the same bucket, which can only be ensured if they have the same hashcode.
NOTE: In practice, the number of collisions is much higher than may be implied above, because the number of buckets used is necessarily much smaller than the number of possible hashcode values.
As per Joshua Bloch book;
A common source of bugs is the failure to override the hashCode
method. You must override hashCode in every class that overrides
equals. Failure to do so will result in a violation of the general
contract for Object.hashCode, which will prevent your class from
functioning properly in conjunction with all hash-based collections,
including HashMap, HashSet, and Hashtable.
Failing to override hashcode while overriding equals is violation the contract of Object.hashCode. But this won't have impact if you are using your objects only on non hash based collection.
However, how do you prevent; the other developers doing so. Also if an object is eligible for element of collection, better provide support for all the collections, don't have half baked objects in your project. This will fail anytime in the future, and you will be caught for not following the contacts while implementing :)
Because that is the way it is meant to be:
Whenever a.equals(b), then a.hashCode() must be same as b.hashCode().
What issues should be considered when overriding equals and hashCode in Java?
There are use-cases where you don't need hashcode(), mostly self-written scenarious, but you can never be sure, because implementations can and might be also relying on hashcode() if they are using equals()
This question is answered many times in SO, but still I will attempt to answer this .
In order to understand this concept completely, we need to understand the purpose of hashcode and equals, how they are implemented, and what exactly is this contract(that hashcode also should be overridden when equals is overridden)
equals method is used to determine the equality of the object. For primitive types, its very easy to determine the equality. We can very easily say that int 1 is always equal to 1. But this equal method talks about the equality of objects. The object equality depends on the instance variables or any other parameter (depend purely on the implementation - how you want to compare).
This equal method needs to be overridden if we want some customized comparison, lets say we want to say that two books are same if they have same title and same author, or I can say two books are equal if they have same ISBN.
hashcode method returns a hash code value of an object. The default implementation of the Object hashcode returns a distinct integers for distinct objects. This integer is calculated based on the memory address of the object.
So we can say that the default implementation of the equals method just comapres the hashcodes to check the equality of the object. But for the book example - we need it differently.
Also Equal objects must produce the same hash code as long as they are equal, however unequal objects need not produce distinct hash codes.
In case of not using a hash based collection, you can break the contract and need not to override the hashcode method - because you ll not be using the default implementations anywhere but still I would not suggest that and would say to have it as you may need it in future when you put those things in collection
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Relationship between hashCode and equals method in Java [duplicate]
(7 answers)
Closed 8 years ago.
This is my understanding about hashcode and equals method :
if obj1.hashcode == obj2.hashcode (returns true) then obj1.equals(obj2) returns true and
if obj1.equals(obj2) returns false (returns true) then obj1.hashcode == obj2.hashcode (returns false)
is this correct?
The convention between equals() and hashCode() mandates this:
If an object is determined to be equal, then their hash code must* be equal. That is to say, if obj1.equals(obj2), then obj1.hashCode() == obj2.hashCode().
If an object is determined to not be equal, then there is no hard-and-fast rule for what their hash code should be between them. They could return the same hash code, but this may cause a multitude of errors.
*: This "must" is actually unenforceable at compile time or run time, so take it with a grain of salt. Just note that you jeopardize the correctness of your application with equals/hashCode usage if it is not implemented correctly.
if obj1.hashcode == obj2.hashcode (returns true) then obj1.equals(obj2) might return true
From the javadoc
If two objects are equal according to the equals(Object) method, then calling the hashCode method on each of the two objects must
produce the same integer result.
It is not required that if two objects are unequal according to the equals(java.lang.Object) method, then calling the hashCode method on
each of the two objects must produce distinct integer results.
However, the programmer should be aware that producing distinct
integer results for unequal objects may improve the performance of
hash tables
That is incorrect. The documentation for Object.equals(Object) has a formal explanation of the contract for extending this method. Essentially the intent for the Object.equals method is to check if two objects are actually the same object. However it often makes sense to override this functionality and instead make your class' equals method determine whether two objects are logically equal to each other (for example, two different instances of String objects which both represent the same sentence).
On the other hand, Object.hashCode() specifies the following contract:
The general contract of hashCode is:
Whenever it is invoked on the same object more than once during an execution of a Java application, the hashCode method must
consistently return the same integer, provided no information used in
equals comparisons on the object is modified. This integer need not
remain consistent from one execution of an application to another
execution of the same application.
If two objects are equal according to the equals(Object) method, then calling the hashCode method on each of the two objects must
produce the same integer result.
It is not required that if two objects are unequal according to the equals(java.lang.Object) method, then calling the hashCode method on
each of the two objects must produce distinct integer results.
However, the programmer should be aware that producing distinct
integer results for unequal objects may improve the performance of
hash tables.
As much as is reasonably practical, the hashCode method defined by class Object does return distinct integers for distinct objects. (This is typically implemented by converting the internal address of the object into an integer, but this implementation technique is not required by the Java™ programming language.)
Basically, two different objects (either logically different or technically distinct) may have the same hashcode, because of how hashcodes are designed, but they should not be "equals". However, if two objects are equal to each other, they must have the same hashcode. Similarly, an object's hashcode may only change if the object itself changes in some way.
For further reading, see the Wikipedia article on hash functions.
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Closed 10 years ago.
Possible Duplicate:
what is an objects hashcode
Let's say that I create an object, called Employee which has id, firstName, lastName and email for instance variables and corresponding setter/getter methods. How is hashCode() calculated if I don't override hashCode() in Employee object when it is stored in collection objects?
If you don't override hashcode() then the default implementation in Object class will be used by collections. This implementation gives different values for different objects, even if they are equal according to the equals() method.
Some collections, like HashSet, HashMap or HashTable use the hash code to store its data and to retrieve it. If you don't implement hashcode() and equals() in a consistent manner, then they will not function properly.
Edit:
As per Javadoc: Object.hashcode() is ''typically implemented by converting the internal address of the object into an integer, but this implementation technique is not required by the Java(TM) programming language''. Therefore I would advise not to rely on a specific implementation. For what the implementations really do, see this answer to a similar question.
From the documentation:
As much as is reasonably practical, the hashCode method defined by
class Object does return distinct integers for distinct objects. (This
is typically implemented by converting the internal address of the
object into an integer, but this implementation technique is not
required by the JavaTM programming language.)
So basically when you store in a Map/Set/somethingThatRequiresHashCode, the JVM will use the internal memory address of that instance to calculate the hashCode, guaranteeing (as much as hash functions guarantee anything - they don't) that each distinct instance will have a unique hashCode.
This is particularly important because of the Object contract regarding equals and hashCode, since:
The equals method for class Object implements the most discriminating
possible equivalence relation on objects; that is, for any non-null
reference values x and y, this method returns true if and only if x
and y refer to the same object (x == y has the value true).
If you don't override equals, it will compare the internal address of the two references, which matches the logic behind hashCode.
If your question is more related to: Will the JVM look at the values inside an instance to determine equality/calculate hashcode, the answer is simply no, if you do:
MyObject a = new MyObject("a", 123,"something");
MyObject b = new MyObject("a", 123,"something");
a and b will have different hashcodes.
From effective Java 2nd Edition
Item 9: Always override hashCode when you override equals
A common
source of bugs is the failure to override the hashCode method. You
must override hashCode in every class that overrides equals. Failure
to do so will result in a violation of the general contract for
Object.hashCode, which will prevent your class from functioning
properly in conjunction with all hash-based collections, including
HashMap, HashSet, and Hashtable.
I suggest you read that chapter. There are a lot of examples, that you can learn, what will happen if you don't do so.
It depends on the collection, most collections should work even if the hashCode of the elements has not been overridden, except collections like HashSet which rely on the element hashCode in order to work properly.
Beware that the hashCode of a collection usually relies on the hashCode of the elements:
Returns the hash code value for this collection. While the Collection
interface adds no stipulations to the general contract for the
Object.hashCode method, programmers should take note that any class
that overrides the Object.equals method must also override the
Object.hashCode method in order to satisfy the general contract for
the Object.hashCode method. In particular, c1.equals(c2) implies that
c1.hashCode()==c2.hashCode()
See: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/util/Collection.html#hashCode%28%29
**type of field** **hash code formula**
boolean fieldHash = f ? 0 : 1
any integer type except long fieldHash = (int) f
long fieldHash = (int) (f ^ (f >>> 32))
float fieldHash = Float.floatToIntBits( f )
double int v=Double.doubleToLongBits(f)
fieldHash (int) (v ^ (v >>> 32))
any Object reference fieldHash = f.hashCode()
If you write a custom type you are responsible for creating a good hashCode implementation that will best represent the state of the current instance.
http://content.hccfl.edu/pollock/AJava/HashCode.htm
why java Object class has two methods hashcode() and equals()? One of them looks redundant and its percolated to the bottom most derived class?
Why do you think one is redundant? They say different things:
hashCode is "give me some way of efficiently seeing whether two objects are likely to be equal"
equals is "check whether this object is genuinely equal to another"
You definitely need both - although I don't believe they should really be in Object in the first place.
You absolutely need hash codes in order to perform efficient lookups with hash tables - and you absolutely need further equality checks because hashes will collide (there are far more possible strings than hash codes, for example).
First of all, when you override equals() you MUST override hashcode() as well.
Failure to do so
will result in a violation of the general contract for Object.hashCode, which will
prevent your class from functioning properly in conjunction with all hash-based
collections, including HashMap, HashSet, and Hashtable.
Here is the contract, copied from the Object specification [JavaSE6]:
Whenever it is invoked on the same object more than once during an execu-
tion of an application, the hashCode method must consistently return the
same integer, provided no information used in equals comparisons on the
object is modified. This integer need not remain consistent from one execu-
tion of an application to another execution of the same application.
If two objects are equal according to the equals(Object) method, then call-
ing the hashCode method on each of the two objects must produce the same
integer result.
It is not required that if two objects are unequal according to the equals(Object) method, then calling the hashCode method on each of the two objects
must produce distinct integer results. However, the programmer should be
aware that producing distinct integer results for unequal objects may improve
the performance of hash tables.
The fundamental idea is that by comparing hashcode()s it's quick to check whether two objects are probably equal. If their hashcodes are equal, then the objects probably are equal (not necessarily, but it's a good guess). Then a more profound (and more expensive) check with equals() is performed. This is important to speed up all kind of look-ups (from maps etc).
equals is to compare objects, hashcode is used to generate a hash value from an object, which will then be used by the java map containers (Hashtable, Map etc).
it's common practice to override them together (if you override hashcode, you need to override equals and vice versa).