HashTable iterator over entries

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Assessment

Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Newbie friendliness
35/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
rust

Research direction

Start by reading the HashTable::extract_if and OccupiedEntry::remove APIs described in the issue, along with the Iterator usage shown. Determine whether an entry iterator can expose both sides while satisfying Rust's borrowing rules; done means the API shape, removal behavior, and required tests are clearly established.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Hello,
I have a crate that creates a key-to-key map (i.e. a "double-sided" map). This is implemented with two maps that index into each other. I want to implement an iterator similar to hash_table::ExtractIf, but I must provide an reference to both the left and right elements to the predicate and have that iterator yield both elements.

The problem is that there is no direct way to solve this with the existing APIs to the HashTable and still make the borrow checker happy. The best solution that I've come up with the existing APIs is to use HashTable::extract_if on one table to "smuggle out" elements from the other side and then pull the smuggled item out with Iterator::map. This works but is far from ideal:

let push = Rc::new(RefCell::new(None));
let pull = push_cache.clone();
let right_set = &mut self.right_set;
self.left_set
    .extract_if(move |left| {
        let Ok(right_entry) =
            right_set.find_entry(left.hash, hash_and_id(left.hash, left.id))
        else {
            // NOTE: This shouldn't happen.
            return false;
        };
        if f(&left.value, &right_entry.get().value) {
            push.borrow_mut().insert(right_entry.remove().0);
            true
        } else {
            false
        }
    })
    .map(move |l| {
        let Some(r) = pull.borrow_mut().take() else {
            panic!()
        };
        (l.value, r.value)
    })

However, if there were an iterator over the hash table that yielded OccupiedEntrys rather than just references, this iterator would be trivial to construct. I could zip the two iterators together, pass the references to the predicate, and, if true, call OccupiedEntry::remove on both entries.

Would such an iterator be possible to implement for HashTable?

Dominant language
Rust
Stars
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Forks
358
Avg merge
11h 57m
Merged PRs (30d)
2

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