I found the following bugs with the current implementations of getHash in the various TypeInfo classes:

1) TypeInfo_Array.getHash doesn't work correctly with class objects.
with custom toHash() methods. Or, for that matter, arrays of AA's (which
have their own problems--see (3a)). It just does a hash of the binary
representation of the array.

2) TypeInfo_StaticArray.getHash doesn't suffer from (1), but it does suffer from another problem: it simply sums the hashes from each element, but this is prone to reordering hash collisions: an int[3] with elements [1,2,3] will have the same hash value as [3,2,1] or any reordering thereof.

3) TypeInfo_AssociativeArray.getHash is not implemented, so it just defaults to the base class getHash, which just does a hash of the binary representation of the AA. Unfortunately, this is fraught with problems:

	a) Two AA's with exactly the same key/value pairs may be binary
	unequal, because the underlying size of the hash table may be
	different (this happens when you initialize an AA with a literal
	vs. manually setting each element).

	b) If values are objects that implement toHash(), then the
	current implementation will have the wrong behaviour.

4) TypeInfo_Class.getHash will call the object's toHash method, if implemented, otherwise it hashes the binary representation of the object. But if the object has members that are references/pointers or other objects/structs that implement getHash, this will be wrong.

These problems cause AA's to have many subtle breakages, for example,
using another AA as key doesn't work properly because of (3); using
arrays of objects as key doesn't work because of (1), using static
arrays as key may trigger an unusually high number of hash collisions
due to (2).

To fix (1) may cause noticeable slowdown when the key is an array of basic types, such as dstring (we'd have to compute the hash of each dchar, then compute the hash of the hashes).  Is there an easy way to tell whether or not an array's elements are binary-hashable? If so, we can still use hashing of the binary representation of the array for the simple cases (dstring, wstring, array of structs without nested refs/objects), and save the slower code for more complicated arrays.

For (2), we may be able to incorporate the array index into the hash summation so as to make it resistant to reordering collisions. But it may be that we might as well just compute the hash of the hashes at this point?

For (3), we can collect the hashes of the keys (already stored in the
bucket) and the hashes of the values, and doing a hash on them. (This
seems to be the easiest one to fix?)

To fix (4) will require compile-time reflection... but may introduce
slowdowns? Is there a way to detect the easy cases (binary-hashable) so
that we only incur slowdown on the complicated cases?


T

-- 
Music critic: "That's an imitation fugue!"

H. S. Teoh:

> I found the following bugs with the current implementations of getHash in the various TypeInfo classes:

Maybe there are other bugs you have not found yet.
In my opinion this is an important topic (some of the bugs listed here have wasted lot of my time, and generally those limits/bugs reduce the usefulness and safety of the built-in AAs significantly).

Bye,
bearophile

On 01.03.2012 1:45, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> I found the following bugs with the current implementations of getHash
> in the various TypeInfo classes:
>
> 1) TypeInfo_Array.getHash doesn't work correctly with class objects.
> with custom toHash() methods. Or, for that matter, arrays of AA's (which
> have their own problems--see (3a)). It just does a hash of the binary
> representation of the array.
>
> 2) TypeInfo_StaticArray.getHash doesn't suffer from (1), but it does
> suffer from another problem: it simply sums the hashes from each
> element, but this is prone to reordering hash collisions: an int[3] with
> elements [1,2,3] will have the same hash value as [3,2,1] or any
> reordering thereof.
>
> 3) TypeInfo_AssociativeArray.getHash is not implemented, so it just
> defaults to the base class getHash, which just does a hash of the binary
> representation of the AA. Unfortunately, this is fraught with problems:
>
> 	a) Two AA's with exactly the same key/value pairs may be binary
> 	unequal, because the underlying size of the hash table may be
> 	different (this happens when you initialize an AA with a literal
> 	vs. manually setting each element).
>
> 	b) If values are objects that implement toHash(), then the
> 	current implementation will have the wrong behaviour.
>
> 4) TypeInfo_Class.getHash will call the object's toHash method, if
> implemented, otherwise it hashes the binary representation of the
> object. But if the object has members that are references/pointers or
> other objects/structs that implement getHash, this will be wrong.
>
> These problems cause AA's to have many subtle breakages, for example,
> using another AA as key doesn't work properly because of (3); using
> arrays of objects as key doesn't work because of (1), using static
> arrays as key may trigger an unusually high number of hash collisions
> due to (2).
>
> To fix (1) may cause noticeable slowdown when the key is an array of
> basic types, such as dstring (we'd have to compute the hash of each
> dchar, then compute the hash of the hashes).  Is there an easy way to
> tell whether or not an array's elements are binary-hashable? If so, we
> can still use hashing of the binary representation of the array for the
> simple cases (dstring, wstring, array of structs without nested
> refs/objects), and save the slower code for more complicated arrays.
>

std.traits hasIndirections?

> For (2), we may be able to incorporate the array index into the hash
> summation so as to make it resistant to reordering collisions. But it
> may be that we might as well just compute the hash of the hashes at this
> point?

I suspect arrays should be usually hashed as strings, e.g. a simplistic
hash = seed;
foreach(x; arr)
   hash = mix(hash, x);//if x is not integral use x.toHash()
hash = mix(hash, arr.length);

where mix(x) is k*x+b, or (x<<k) ^ b or whatever.

>
> For (3), we can collect the hashes of the keys (already stored in the
> bucket) and the hashes of the values, and doing a hash on them. (This
> seems to be the easiest one to fix?)
>
Or hash them as array of pairs, but whatever is faster.

> To fix (4) will require compile-time reflection... but may introduce
> slowdowns? Is there a way to detect the easy cases (binary-hashable) so
> that we only incur slowdown on the complicated cases?
>

see  point 1.


-- 
Dmitry Olshansky