Horrendous performance & large heap footprint of Java 8 constructor reference?
The computeIfAbsent
signature is the following:
V computeIfAbsent(K key, Function<? super K, ? extends V> mappingFunction)
So the mappingFunction
is the function which receives one argument. In your case K = Integer
and V = List<Integer>
, so the signature becomes (omitting PECS):
Function<Integer, List<Integer>> mappingFunction
When you write ArrayList::new
in the place where Function<Integer, List<Integer>>
is necessary, compiler looks for the suitable constructor which is:
public ArrayList(int initialCapacity)
So essentially your code is equivalent to
map.computeIfAbsent(index, i->new ArrayList<>(i)).add(index);
And your keys are treated as initialCapacity
values which leads to pre-allocation of arrays of ever increasing size, which, of course, quite fast leads to OutOfMemoryError
.
In this particular case constructor references are not suitable. Use lambdas instead. Were the Supplier<? extends V>
used in computeIfAbsent
, then ArrayList::new
would be appropriate.
In the first case (ArrayList::new
) you are using the constructor which takes an initial capacity argument, in the second case you are not. A large initial capacity (index
in your code) causes a large Object[]
to be allocated, resulting in your OutOfMemoryError
s.
Here are the two constructors' current implementations:
public ArrayList(int initialCapacity) {
if (initialCapacity > 0) {
this.elementData = new Object[initialCapacity];
} else if (initialCapacity == 0) {
this.elementData = EMPTY_ELEMENTDATA;
} else {
throw new IllegalArgumentException("Illegal Capacity: "+
initialCapacity);
}
}
public ArrayList() {
this.elementData = DEFAULTCAPACITY_EMPTY_ELEMENTDATA;
}
Something similar happens in HashSet
, except the array is not allocated until add
is called.