I'm planing to make a plugin that will require some large hashmaps of strings. I was just wondering, how large can a HashMap be before it becomes an issue for performance?
I do not think there is an maximum amount of variables in a map before there is going to be performance issues.
Actually there is, but it's very many. Hash codes gotta run out once, and when that happens, it's downhill from there. I don't think it would ever matter though.
Assuming the keys are evenly distributed among the possible positions, I doubt performance would be affected in any noticeable way even for a large amount of keys. However, you could always just try performing a test by inputting however many Strings you expect to be in your HashMap and see how long it takes to find any given key.
