Simon Willison’s Weblog

Subscribe

How is a dictionary (key value) related to a hash?

2nd September 2013

My answer to How is a dictionary (key value) related to a hash? on Quora

The following terms describe essentially the same data structure across a number of different languages:

  • A Perl hash
  • A Ruby hash
  • A Python dictionary
  • A Java Map (an interface used by HashMap and others)
  • A Lua table
  • A JavaScript object (if you ignore object prototypes)