Scala 2.12 map.keySet leaks reference to map

[fanf]

Hello, we discovered with prod pain and crashes that Map.keySet leaks a reference to the Map object so that it is not GC'ed and leaks memory - huge memory if objects in the map are big and you wanted to only return light identifiers to them.

It can be seen for ex here: https://gist.github.com/fanf/ff39065f7f9738467e40929ad7490da1

Is this known/wanted and I'm just 13 years late in that knowledge, or is it a bug (at least a bad documentation)?

The problem is likely the references to self in DefaultKeySet (contains, size...) https://github.com/scala/scala/blob/2.12.x/src/library/scala/collection/MapLike.scala#L176

[plokhotnyuk]

@fanf it looks that DefaultKeySet was implemented like a view (not a separated collection of keys)...

[szeiger]

I think it makes sense that keySet references the source map because it is usually the fastest and most straight-forward implementation.. But you wouldn't expect so from documentation such as

Collects all keys of this map in an iterable collection.

[fanf]

Yes, it would be very appreciated to make obvious the fact that it's a view and not a new object, AND what is the best (most efficient) method to get a fresh, independant Set.
For reference, the naive Set()++map.keySet() we tested first does not work, most likelly because ++ is smart and see that one of the set is empty and just returns the second one.

[fanf]

(I knew about values which is never what you want it to be, keySet is a new one :)

[SethTisue]

best (most efficient) method to get a fresh, independant Set.

.keysIterator.toSet?

[fanf]

@SethTisue most likely from my user point of view, but I don't know if there's better way :)

[plokhotnyuk]

Both keySet.toSeq.toSet and keysIterator.toSet methods for getting a separated set are vulnerable for hash collision based DoS attacks even if the original map (like scala.collection.mutable.CollisionProofHashMap or java.collection.LinkedHashMap) is safe: #11203

[SethTisue]

@scala/collections is 2.13 also affected? (if it's 2.12-only we should close the ticket)

[som-snytt]

2.13 is similarly a view onto the enclosing Map:

  /** A generic trait that is reused by keyset implementations */
  protected trait GenKeySet { this: Set[K] =>
    def iterator: Iterator[K] = MapOps.this.keysIterator
    def contains(key: K): Boolean = MapOps.this.contains(key)
    override def size: Int = MapOps.this.size
    override def knownSize: Int = MapOps.this.knownSize
    override def isEmpty: Boolean = MapOps.this.isEmpty
  }

The 2.13 nomenclature dictates that keySet should be a view and keySetted should be a copy. Good joke alert!

Agree that a tweak to the Scaladoc is deemed advisable.

[som-snytt]

Today's complaint in chat was that keys is an Iterable of no known properties.

Generally, keysIterator uses the map's iterator, keySet is a special set that uses keysIterator, and keys is just your keySet.

ListMap has a test expecting keys.map(f) to preserve order (insertion order in this case). However, I would expect to require keys.iterator.map(f). (It looks like sorted maps try to preserve the sort order of their keys.)

[fommil]

heh, I hit this problem this week. The side effect was that I thought I'd discovered a new way to add 4 bit numbers together that used a lot less diodes and transistors than the usual encoding. Suffice to say, my excitement has been suitably squashed upon discovery that I was accidentally deduplicating before applying my cost function... le sigh.

[som-snytt]

To quote Jesus from "The Chosen" tv show, "In this world, bones will break, and hearts will break." He goes on to say that in Scala 4, matters are much improved.