= Hash Consing Library :name: hash_cons :toc: :toc-placement: preamble

Hash Consing Library (hash_cons) is a Rust library offering efficient hash consing mechanisms suitable for both single-threaded and multi-threaded environments. This library provides a way to reuse immutable data structures efficiently, reducing memory usage and improving performance in applications where duplicate data structures are common.

== Features

• Single-Threaded: Ideal for applications that do not require thread safety. It uses Rc and RefCell for efficient memory management without the overhead of synchronization.
• Thread-Safe: Suitable for multi-threaded applications, using Arc and RwLock to ensure safe concurrent access.

== Usage Add hash_cons as a dependency in your project's Cargo.toml:

[source,toml]

[dependencies] hash_cons = "0.1.0" # Replace with the actual version

Select the appropriate feature for your application:

[source,toml]

For single-threaded environments

hash_cons = { version = "0.1.0", features = ["single-threaded"] }

For multi-threaded environments

hash_cons = { version = "0.1.0", features = ["thread-safe"] }

== Examples === Single-Threaded Usage In a single-threaded context, the library can be used as follows:

[source,rust]

use hash_cons::single_threaded::HCTable;

fn main() { let mut table = HCTable::new(); let hc_value = table.insert(42); // Use hc_value as needed }

=== Thread-Safe Usage For multi-threaded scenarios, the thread-safe version of the library can be implemented like this:

[source,rust]

use hash_cons::thread_safe::AhcTable;

fn main() { let table = AhcTable::new(); let hc_value = table.insert(42); // Share and use hc_value across threads }

== Testing Run the tests to ensure everything is working as expected:

[source,shell]

cargo test

== License This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file in the repository for more information.