Map package variable breaks the contract execution without exception

[piux2]

package maptest

var m = make(map[string]string)

func Deposit() string{
  m["0xABC"] = "10ugnot"
  return "Deposited"
}

The maptest contract does not return anything when Deposit() is called a second time. The contract seems to have stopped executing before the return but no panic or exception.

[moul]

Golang's team intentionally made it random, starting with Go 1, to make developers not rely on it. See https://go.dev/blog/maps.

Protobuf also specifies that they have fewer guarantees and implements them as slices of structs on the wire.

And on a side note, some web2 CTO friends added linters to prevent their teams from using maps. Even in web2, indeterministic maps were too confusing with flappy unit tests or bugs discovered in production. They told me that maps are generally deficient in performance, not only in go. But please, keep this comment as a hint and not a fact.

---

My current feeling:

• We should not deny them thoroughly (I hope we can one day find a technical and legal way to convert and import web2 libraries that make sense).
• We should make them determinist.
• We should/could deny them from being used as global values, function parameters, or returned values. So they can only be used for some patterns and inside functions, i.e., removing duplicates from a slice.
• we should create better structures like p/avl.Tree and p/avl.MutTree to have easy-to-use data structs optimized for chains.
• If we deny maps completely, we can suggest alternative approaches like []struct{Key:..., Value:...}, which is the most common approach for other languages not having map support or looking for more excellent compatibility.