associative array

[Francesco Potortì]

I need an associative array, and I tried with structs, with the field
names as keys.

Unfortunately it clearly slows down with size.  I have about 30000 keys,
for each I first check if it's already there, if not I create it, if
it's there I add some data.  The number of operations (insertion +
updates) is around 55000.  The slowdown appears to be quadratic (but I
have not made any measurement, in fact).

Are there more efficient ways to build and update an associative array?

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