Why is it important to override GetHashCode when Equals method is overridden?

Given the following class

public class Foo
{
    public int FooId { get; set; }
    public string FooName { get; set; }

    public override bool Equals(object obj)
    {
        Foo fooItem = obj as Foo;

        if (fooItem == null) 
        {
           return false;
        }

        return fooItem.FooId == this.FooId;
    }

    public override int GetHashCode()
    {
        // Which is preferred?

        return base.GetHashCode();

        //return this.FooId.GetHashCode();
    }
}

I have overridden the Equals method because Foo represent a row for the Foos table. Which is the preferred method for overriding the GetHashCode?

Why is it important to override GetHashCode?

Yes, it is important if your item will be used as a key in a dictionary, or HashSet, etc - since this is used (in the absence of a custom IEqualityComparer) to group items into buckets. If the hash-code for two items does not match, they may never be considered equal (Equals will simply never be called).

The GetHashCode() method should reflect the Equals logic; the rules are:

• if two things are equal (Equals(...) == true) then they must return the same value for GetHashCode()

• if the GetHashCode() is equal, it is not necessary for them to be the same; this is a collision, and Equals will be called to see if it is a real equality or not.

In this case, it looks like "return FooId;" is a suitable GetHashCode() implementation. If you are testing multiple properties, it is common to combine them using code like below, to reduce diagonal collisions (i.e. so that new Foo(3,5) has a different hash-code to new Foo(5,3)):

In modern frameworks, the HashCode type has methods to help you create a hashcode from multiple values; on older frameworks, you'd need to go without, so something like:

unchecked // only needed if you're compiling with arithmetic checks enabled
{ // (the default compiler behaviour is *disabled*, so most folks won't need this)
    int hash = 13;
    hash = (hash * 7) + field1.GetHashCode();
    hash = (hash * 7) + field2.GetHashCode();
    ...
    return hash;
}

Oh - for convenience, you might also consider providing == and != operators when overriding Equals and GetHashCode.

A demonstration of what happens when you get this wrong is here.

Stack Overflow Q#371328, score: 1496