(Part one is here.)
You know, I was so confident when writing the first post that I was addressing a common problem (which is not entirely untrue considering Google hits) and that it would be a pretty straightforward “here’s the issue, here’s the fix, enjoy” scenario.
Boy, was I wrong.
The common approach when trying to fix a bug is to first reproduce the problem. While I had no difficulty making a fictitious test case that does reproduce the “unreachable hashed entry” issue, I’m having all the trouble in the world finding a proper, real-world, justifiable algorithm that needs a hash table with mutable keys.
It just never seems to me like a reasonable thing to do.
Nevertheless, being the stubborn bastard that I am, I’ll present here a recipe to encounter the problem with as much justifications as I could make up. And if ever you’re ever stuck in a situation where you do need a hash set to react properly with mutable entries, well you’ll have a solution of sorts.
Take a deep breath (this is a looooong one) and hit the jump.