Scala immutable map, when to go mutable

immutabilitymapmutablescalause-case

My present use case is pretty trivial, either mutable or immutable Map will do the trick.

Have a method that takes an immutable Map, which then calls a 3rd party API method that takes an immutable Map as well

def doFoo(foo: String = "default", params: Map[String, Any] = Map()) {

  val newMap = 
    if(someCondition) params + ("foo" -> foo) else params

  api.doSomething(newMap)
}

The Map in question will generally be quite small, at most there might be an embedded List of case class instances, a few thousand entries max. So, again, assume little impact in going immutable in this case (i.e. having essentially 2 instances of the Map via the newMap val copy).

Still, it nags me a bit, copying the map just to get a new map with a few k->v entries tacked onto it.

I could go mutable and params.put("bar", bar), etc. for the entries I want to tack on, and then params.toMap to convert to immutable for the api call, that is an option. but then I have to import and pass around mutable maps, which is a bit of hassle compared to going with Scala's default immutable Map.

So, what are the general guidelines for when it is justified/good practice to use mutable Map over immutable Maps?

Thanks

EDIT
so, it appears that an add operation on an immutable map takes near constant time, confirming @dhg's and @Nicolas's assertion that a full copy is not made, which solves the problem for the concrete case presented.

Best Answer

Depending on the immutable Map implementation, adding a few entries may not actually copy the entire original Map. This is one of the advantages to the immutable data structure approach: Scala will try to get away with copying as little as possible.

This kind of behavior is easiest to see with a List. If I have a val a = List(1,2,3), then that list is stored in memory. However, if I prepend an additional element like val b = 0 :: a, I do get a new 4-element List back, but Scala did not copy the orignal list a. Instead, we just created one new link, called it b, and gave it a pointer to the existing List a.

You can envision strategies like this for other kinds of collections as well. For example, if I add one element to a Map, the collection could simply wrap the existing map, falling back to it when needed, all while providing an API as if it were a single Map.

Related Solutions

C++ – Does the ‘mutable’ keyword have any purpose other than allowing the variable to be modified by a const function

It allows the differentiation of bitwise const and logical const. Logical const is when an object doesn't change in a way that is visible through the public interface, like your locking example. Another example would be a class that computes a value the first time it is requested, and caches the result.

Since c++11 mutable can be used on a lambda to denote that things captured by value are modifiable (they aren't by default):

int x = 0;
auto f1 = [=]() mutable {x = 42;};  // OK
auto f2 = [=]()         {x = 42;};  // Error: a by-value capture cannot be modified in a non-mutable lambda

Mutable vs immutable objects

Well, there are a few aspects to this.

Mutable objects without reference-identity can cause bugs at odd times. For example, consider a Person bean with a value-based equals method:
```
Map<Person, String> map = ...
Person p = new Person();
map.put(p, "Hey, there!");

p.setName("Daniel");
map.get(p);       // => null
```
The Person instance gets "lost" in the map when used as a key because its hashCode and equality were based upon mutable values. Those values changed outside the map and all of the hashing became obsolete. Theorists like to harp on this point, but in practice I haven't found it to be too much of an issue.
Another aspect is the logical "reasonability" of your code. This is a hard term to define, encompassing everything from readability to flow. Generically, you should be able to look at a piece of code and easily understand what it does. But more important than that, you should be able to convince yourself that it does what it does correctly. When objects can change independently across different code "domains", it sometimes becomes difficult to keep track of what is where and why ("spooky action at a distance"). This is a more difficult concept to exemplify, but it's something that is often faced in larger, more complex architectures.
Finally, mutable objects are killer in concurrent situations. Whenever you access a mutable object from separate threads, you have to deal with locking. This reduces throughput and makes your code dramatically more difficult to maintain. A sufficiently complicated system blows this problem so far out of proportion that it becomes nearly impossible to maintain (even for concurrency experts).

Immutable objects (and more particularly, immutable collections) avoid all of these problems. Once you get your mind around how they work, your code will develop into something which is easier to read, easier to maintain and less likely to fail in odd and unpredictable ways. Immutable objects are even easier to test, due not only to their easy mockability, but also the code patterns they tend to enforce. In short, they're good practice all around!

With that said, I'm hardly a zealot in this matter. Some problems just don't model nicely when everything is immutable. But I do think that you should try to push as much of your code in that direction as possible, assuming of course that you're using a language which makes this a tenable opinion (C/C++ makes this very difficult, as does Java). In short: the advantages depend somewhat on your problem, but I would tend to prefer immutability.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

C++ – Does the ‘mutable’ keyword have any purpose other than allowing the variable to be modified by a const function

Mutable vs immutable objects

Related Topic