phobic

Minimal-ish perfect hash functions for very large key sets, with a parameterised load factor.

A perfect hash function maps a known set of n keys to distinct integers in [0, m) with no collisions. Build it once from your key set, then every lookup is O(1). phobic builds in parallel C, queries in parallel C, and serialises to a portable wire format.

pip install phobic

Usage

import phobic

# Build
keys = [f"key_{i}".encode() for i in range(1_000_000)]
phf = phobic.build(keys)

# Query
phf[b"key_42"]                  # scalar -> int slot
phf.lookup(keys[:100])          # batch -> list[int]
phf.lookup_fixed(arr)           # bulk: numpy (N, W) uint8 -> uint64 array (up to ~16x)

# Persist (wire format v4, mmap-friendly layout)
data = phf.to_bytes()
phf2 = phobic.from_bytes(data)
assert phf == phf2

# Inspect
len(phf)             # number of keys
phf.range_size       # output range, [0, range_size)
phf.num_shards       # internal sharding (1 at small N, more at scale)
phf.bits_per_key     # serialised size in bits, divided by num_keys

Knobs

phf = phobic.build(
    keys,
    load_factor=0.5,    # num_keys / range_size, in (0, 1]. 1.0 = MPHF.
    seed=None,          # one knob; reproducible builds
    num_shards=None,    # None = auto (1 below ~32K keys; scales above)
    num_threads=None,   # None = auto (CPU count)
    bucket_size=None,   # None = ceil(log2(per_shard_N))
    max_retries=100,    # per-shard retry budget on the pilot search
    assume_unique=False, # skip the O(N) Python-side uniqueness check (opt-in)
)

load_factor (the central trade-off)

load_factor is the canonical hash-table sense: keys per slot, in (0, 1].

If a build can't find a perfect hash within max_retries, phobic raises a RuntimeError that names the failing shard and suggests how to relax the constraints.

Parallelism

Both the build and lookup() release the GIL and fan out across pthreads:

• Build parallelism is per-shard. At num_shards=1 the build is single-threaded; above that it scales nearly linearly to num_threads.
• Batch query chunks across num_threads above an internal threshold, else serial (per-call thread-spawn cost makes serial faster for small batches). The thresholds differ by path: the list lookup() parallelises above ~256K keys (per-key Python overhead caps its parallel speedup), while the numpy lookup_fixed path parallelises from ~32K (pure C, ~4-5x). For the fastest bulk path use lookup_fixed.

Determinism is preserved: same seed and same num_shards produce byte-identical to_bytes() regardless of num_threads.

Performance

Measured on a 12-core machine, default load_factor=0.5, 16-byte uniform keys (cipher-maps shape):

bits/key dropped from ~1.16 (0.3.x) to ~0.89 in 0.4.0 (about 24% smaller blobs) via the PHF4 bit-packed pilot format. assume_unique=True skips the Python-side uniqueness check (a 2-second set(raw) hash at 10M keys); for callers whose keys are unique by construction (e.g. cipher-maps, HMAC outputs), this is pure win.

Bulk query: lookup_fixed (numpy) reaches ~9 ns/key at 1M (up to ~16x faster than lookup(list)) when keys are already in a contiguous buffer, by skipping per-key Python objects.

vs maph's partitioned_phf<phobic4> (the reference in the sibling research repo): at 10M, phobic is several x faster and uses ~3x fewer bits per key. See .claude/EXPERIMENTS_0_4_0.md for the 0.4.0 efficiency study.

Wire format

phf.to_bytes() produces a versioned, mmap-friendly v4 blob (magic b"PHF4"):

56 bytes  global header   (num_keys, total_range, num_shards, seed, shard_seed)
48 bytes  per shard       (descriptor table, fixed-size, indexable; incl. pilot_bits)
variable  per shard       (bit-packed pilot blocks at pilot_bits/shard, 8-byte aligned)

Pilots are packed at the minimum fixed bit width per shard (typically ~13 bits, vs the old 16), which is where the ~24% size reduction comes from; they are unpacked on load, so query speed is unchanged. Fixed-size descriptor table + absolute pilot offsets means a future phobic.from_file(path) can mmap the blob directly without parsing variable-size sections. The 0.3.x PHF3 format is not readable by 0.4.0 (rebuild persisted blobs; see MIGRATION.md).

from_bytes validates structure (magic, version, descriptor/pilot bounds, shard-shape consistency) and raises ValueError on a malformed blob rather than crashing. It does not authenticate blobs: it is built for round-tripping trusted, locally-produced output (to_bytes, multiprocessing hand-off), not as a hardened parser for adversarial input. A structurally-valid blob from an untrusted source can still encode a wrong (but safe) mapping; treat deserialized data with the usual caution.

Cross-process transport

PHF instances support equality (==), copy.deepcopy, and the __reduce__ protocol used by multiprocessing.Pool:

import multiprocessing as mp

phf = phobic.build(keys)
with mp.Pool(8) as p:
    p.map(worker_using_phf, work_items)   # phf serialises through to_bytes / from_bytes

What phobic explicitly is not

phobic is a pure PHF builder. The following live elsewhere:

• Membership testing / Bloom filters / fingerprinting: out of scope. Phobic does not promise that a key not in the build set will be detected; it returns an arbitrary slot for unknown keys. See maph for membership oracles.
• Value retrieval / Bloomier maps / cipher maps: out of scope. Build an external value array indexed by phf[key].
• Approximate / non-perfect modes: a PHF is always perfect. Build failure raises with a diagnostic; non-perfect output is a category error.

License

MIT