OrderedCollections

For detailed usage see our docs

OrderedCollections is a library for Elixir that provides efficient, sorted data structures:

SortedMap and SortedSet wrap Erlang’s :gb_trees and :gb_sets for easy use in Elixir.

Features

• SortedMap

  • Insert, update, and delete key-value pairs while preserving sorted order.
  • Fast lookups using :gb_trees
  • Range queries over keys.
  • Conversion to standard Elixir Map or list.

• SortedSet

  • Maintain a set of unique elements in sorted order.
  • Fast membership checks using :gb_sets
  • Union, intersection, and difference operations.
  • Range queries over elements.
  • Conversion to a standard Elixir MapSet or list.

Installation

Add ordered_collections to your list of dependencies in mix.exs:

def deps do
  [
    {:ordered_collections, "~> 0.1.1"}
  ]
end

Benchmarks

Run on my local machine:

• Operating System: macOS
• CPU Information: Apple M3
• Number of Available Cores: 8
• Available memory: 16 GB
• Elixir 1.18.3
• Erlang 27.2.4
• JIT enabled: true

Delete Operations (Key-Value Stores)

Operation	Structure	IPS	Average Time	Deviation	Median	99th Percentile	Comparison
Delete	gb_trees	1.11 K	901.71 μs	±7.36%	885.04 μs	1129.99 μs	—
Delete	SortedMap	1.02 K	985.20 μs	±4.89%	972.92 μs	1198.37 μs	1.09× slower (+83.48 μs)

Insert Operations (Key-Value Stores)

Operation	Structure	IPS	Average Time	Deviation	Median	99th Percentile	Comparison
Insert	gb_trees	348.54	2.87 ms	±12.31%	2.85 ms	3.71 ms	—
Insert	SortedMap	298.88	3.35 ms	±9.82%	3.38 ms	4.21 ms	1.17× slower (+0.48 ms)

Lookup Operations (Key-Value Stores)

Operation	Structure	IPS	Average Time	Deviation	Median	99th Percentile	Comparison
Lookup	gb_trees	2.73 K	366.81 μs	±9.90%	361.96 μs	446.20 μs	—
Lookup	SortedMap	2.35 K	425.65 μs	±18.01%	415.50 μs	508.36 μs	1.16× slower (+58.84 μs)

Range Operations (Key-Value Stores)

Operation	Structure	IPS	Average Time	Deviation	Median	99th Percentile	Comparison
Range	SortedMap	8.85 K	113.04 μs	±3.73%	112.21 μs	130.50 μs	—
Range	gb_trees	8.39 K	119.25 μs	±32.45%	118.08 μs	136.58 μs	1.05× slower (+6.20 μs)
Range	Elixir (naive)	5.67 K	176.34 μs	±12.57%	173.63 μs	220.07 μs	1.56× slower (+63.29 μs)

SET (Unique Elements) Delete Operations

Operation	Structure	IPS	Average Time	Deviation	Median	99th Percentile	Comparison
Delete	SortedSet	684.77	1.46 ms	±4.06%	1.45 ms	1.67 ms	—
Delete	:gb_sets	684.39	1.46 ms	±4.65%	1.46 ms	1.68 ms	~Same performance

SET (Unique Elements) Insert Operations

Operation	Structure	IPS	Average Time	Deviation	Median	99th Percentile	Comparison
Insert	:gb_sets	554.92	1.80 ms	±7.06%	1.80 ms	2.15 ms	—
Insert	SortedSet	511.32	1.96 ms	±10.78%	1.92 ms	2.46 ms	1.09× slower (+0.154 ms)

SET (Unique Elements) Lookup Operations

Operation	Structure	IPS	Average Time	Deviation	Median	99th Percentile	Comparison
Lookup	:gb_sets	1.68 K	593.48 μs	±5.98%	586.30 μs	708.54 μs	—
Lookup	SortedSet	1.62 K	617.83 μs	±4.29%	614.80 μs	742.15 μs	1.04× slower (+24.36 μs)