Time Complexity of HashMap methods

The code for remove(as in rt.jar for HashMap) is:

/**
 * Removes and returns the entry associated with the specified key
 * in the HashMap.  Returns null if the HashMap contains no mapping
 * for this key.
 */
final Entry<K,V> removeEntryForKey(Object key) {
    int hash = (key == null) ? 0 : hash(key.hashCode());
    int i = indexFor(hash, table.length);
    Entry<K,V> prev = table[i];
    Entry<K,V> e = prev;

    while (e != null) {
        Entry<K,V> next = e.next;
        Object k;
        if (e.hash == hash &&
            ((k = e.key) == key || (key != null && key.equals(k)))) {
            modCount++;
            size--;
            if (prev == e)
                table[i] = next;
            else
                prev.next = next;
            e.recordRemoval(this);
            return e;
        }
        prev = e;
        e = next;
    }

    return e;
}

Clearly, the worst case is O(n).


The source is often helpful: http://kickjava.com/src/java/util/HashMap.java.htm

  • remove: O(1)
  • size: O(1)
  • values: O(n) (on traversal through iterator)