Building an unordered map with tuples as keys

Actually, you could perfectly define a general hash function for boost::tuple. The only requirement is that it lives within the same namespace so that it is picked up by ADL.

I am actually surprised that they did not already write one.

namespace boost { namespace tuples {

  namespace detail {

    template <class Tuple, size_t Index = length<Tuple>::value - 1>
    struct HashValueImpl
    {
      static void apply(size_t& seed, Tuple const& tuple)
      {
        HashValueImpl<Tuple, Index-1>::apply(seed, tuple);
        boost::hash_combine(seed, tuple.get<Index>());
      }
    };

    template <class Tuple>
    struct HashValueImpl<Tuple,0>
    {
      static void apply(size_t& seed, Tuple const& tuple)
      {
        boost::hash_combine(seed, tuple.get<0>());
      }
    };
  } // namespace detail

  template <class Tuple>
  size_t hash_value(Tuple const& tuple)
  {
    size_t seed = 0;
    detail::HashValueImpl<Tuple>::apply(seed, tuple);
    return seed;
  }

} }

Note: I have only proved it correct, I haven't tested it.

You need a bit of front matter. Because of the underlying implementation of boost::tuples::tuple, make Edge a structure to allow the overloads to resolve correctly. Otherwise, you'll get no matches for

• boost::hash_value(const Edge &)
• operator==(const Edge &, const Edge &)

Code below:

struct Edge {
  Edge(double x1, double x2, double x3, double x4)
    : tuple(x1,x2,x3,x4) {}
  boost::tuples::tuple<double, double, double, double> tuple;
};

// XXX: less than ideal implementation!
bool operator==(const Edge &a, const Edge &b)
{
  return a.tuple.get<0>() == b.tuple.get<0>() &&
         a.tuple.get<1>() == b.tuple.get<1>() &&
         a.tuple.get<2>() == b.tuple.get<2>() &&
         a.tuple.get<3>() == b.tuple.get<3>();
}

// XXX: me too!
std::size_t hash_value(const Edge &e)
{
  std::size_t seed = 0;
  boost::hash_combine(seed, e.tuple.get<0>());
  boost::hash_combine(seed, e.tuple.get<1>());
  boost::hash_combine(seed, e.tuple.get<2>());
  boost::hash_combine(seed, e.tuple.get<3>());
  return seed;
}

typedef boost::unordered_map< Edge, int > EdgeMap;