What's the difference between SortedList and SortedDictionary?
Yes - their performance characteristics differ significantly. It would probably be better to call them SortedList
and SortedTree
as that reflects the implementation more closely.
Look at the MSDN docs for each of them (SortedList
, SortedDictionary
) for details of the performance for different operations in different situtations. Here's a nice summary (from the SortedDictionary
docs):
The
SortedDictionary<TKey, TValue>
generic class is a binary search tree with O(log n) retrieval, where n is the number of elements in the dictionary. In this, it is similar to theSortedList<TKey, TValue>
generic class. The two classes have similar object models, and both have O(log n) retrieval. Where the two classes differ is in memory use and speed of insertion and removal:
SortedList<TKey, TValue>
uses less memory thanSortedDictionary<TKey, TValue>
.
SortedDictionary<TKey, TValue>
has faster insertion and removal operations for unsorted data, O(log n) as opposed to O(n) forSortedList<TKey, TValue>
.If the list is populated all at once from sorted data,
SortedList<TKey, TValue>
is faster thanSortedDictionary<TKey, TValue>
.
(SortedList
actually maintains a sorted array, rather than using a tree. It still uses binary search to find elements.)
Here is a tabular view if it helps...
From a performance perspective:
+------------------+---------+----------+--------+----------+----------+---------+
| Collection | Indexed | Keyed | Value | Addition | Removal | Memory |
| | lookup | lookup | lookup | | | |
+------------------+---------+----------+--------+----------+----------+---------+
| SortedList | O(1) | O(log n) | O(n) | O(n)* | O(n) | Lesser |
| SortedDictionary | O(n)** | O(log n) | O(n) | O(log n) | O(log n) | Greater |
+------------------+---------+----------+--------+----------+----------+---------+
* Insertion is O(log n) for data that are already in sort order, so that each
element is added to the end of the list. If a resize is required, that element
takes O(n) time, but inserting n elements is still amortized O(n log n).
list.
** Available through enumeration, e.g. Enumerable.ElementAt.
From an implementation perspective:
+------------+---------------+----------+------------+------------+------------------+
| Underlying | Lookup | Ordering | Contiguous | Data | Exposes Key & |
| structure | strategy | | storage | access | Value collection |
+------------+---------------+----------+------------+------------+------------------+
| 2 arrays | Binary search | Sorted | Yes | Key, Index | Yes |
| BST | Binary search | Sorted | No | Key | Yes |
+------------+---------------+----------+------------+------------+------------------+
To roughly paraphrase, if you require raw performance SortedDictionary
could be a better choice. If you require lesser memory overhead and indexed retrieval SortedList
fits better. See this question for more on when to use which.
You can read more here, here, here, here and here.
I cracked open Reflector to have a look at this as there seems to be a bit of confusion about SortedList
. It is in fact not a binary search tree, it is a sorted (by key) array of key-value pairs. There is also a TKey[] keys
variable which is sorted in sync with the key-value pairs and used to binary search.
Here is some source (targeting .NET 4.5) to backup my claims.
Private members
// Fields
private const int _defaultCapacity = 4;
private int _size;
[NonSerialized]
private object _syncRoot;
private IComparer<TKey> comparer;
private static TKey[] emptyKeys;
private static TValue[] emptyValues;
private KeyList<TKey, TValue> keyList;
private TKey[] keys;
private const int MaxArrayLength = 0x7fefffff;
private ValueList<TKey, TValue> valueList;
private TValue[] values;
private int version;
SortedList.ctor(IDictionary, IComparer)
public SortedList(IDictionary<TKey, TValue> dictionary, IComparer<TKey> comparer) : this((dictionary != null) ? dictionary.Count : 0, comparer)
{
if (dictionary == null)
{
ThrowHelper.ThrowArgumentNullException(ExceptionArgument.dictionary);
}
dictionary.Keys.CopyTo(this.keys, 0);
dictionary.Values.CopyTo(this.values, 0);
Array.Sort<TKey, TValue>(this.keys, this.values, comparer);
this._size = dictionary.Count;
}
SortedList.Add(TKey, TValue) : void
public void Add(TKey key, TValue value)
{
if (key == null)
{
ThrowHelper.ThrowArgumentNullException(ExceptionArgument.key);
}
int num = Array.BinarySearch<TKey>(this.keys, 0, this._size, key, this.comparer);
if (num >= 0)
{
ThrowHelper.ThrowArgumentException(ExceptionResource.Argument_AddingDuplicate);
}
this.Insert(~num, key, value);
}
SortedList.RemoveAt(int) : void
public void RemoveAt(int index)
{
if ((index < 0) || (index >= this._size))
{
ThrowHelper.ThrowArgumentOutOfRangeException(ExceptionArgument.index, ExceptionResource.ArgumentOutOfRange_Index);
}
this._size--;
if (index < this._size)
{
Array.Copy(this.keys, index + 1, this.keys, index, this._size - index);
Array.Copy(this.values, index + 1, this.values, index, this._size - index);
}
this.keys[this._size] = default(TKey);
this.values[this._size] = default(TValue);
this.version++;
}