BiMap
A BiMap is a bidirectional Map of keys and values, where each key has exactly one value, and each value has exactly one key. Furthermore, both keys and values are unique and there is a one-to-one mapping between keys and values.
When to use
This BiMap can be useful when you have a domain in which there needs to be a strict one-to-one mapping between two types of entities. For example, say we have a BiMap between persons and seats in a room. A person can have only one seat, and a seat can have only one person. Using a BiMap, this restriction is guaranteed. If we assign seat 1 to person A, and then assign seat 5 to person A, seat 1 will automatically be vacant. In a similar way, if we assign seat 1 to person A, and then seat 1 to person B, person A no longer has a seat.
The BiMap internally uses two 'normal' immutable Maps to maintain this guarantee, and therefore also provides fast look-up times both for keys and values. Insertion time and memory usage are double that of a normal Map.
Exports
The @rimbu/core package exports the following concrete BiMap TypeScript types:
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
BiMap<K, V> | a generic BiMap between keys of type K and values of type V |