This chapter describes the associative container types of LEDA. Unlike simple container types, these types store additional information with every single object. In this context, an object is called a key, the information associated to it a value. So the collection consists of key-value pairs.

The associated value can be accessed via a key. In general, the inversion does not hold, because several keys definitely can have the same value, so the mapping is not always invertible. The access time is generally very short thanks to the clever implementations of LEDA.