Multimap disambiguation

If you search for Multimap, hoping to find maps, you may get some other pages appearing because Multimap is also the name of a programming construct.

If you do a Google search for "Multimap" you will see several pages which have nothing to do with maps at all. You may see pages with titles like Multimap C++ reference or Multimap <Key, Data>. This is because Multimap is also the name of a programming construct, so you will find a lot of (very!) technical pages popping up in your search results. But be careful not to dismiss all technical looking pages out of hand. For instance, pages entitled Multimap API... will, most likely, be about Multimap maps. These are likely to be be about the more technical aspects of using Multimap, but may have some useful information about the advanced features of the Multimap mapping software. 

This is all the average map user needs to know about disambiguating their search results, but if you are curious about what Multimap means to programmers and mathematicians, then read on...

In mathematics the most general kind of map is given by a series of keys and values, where the keys are said to be mapped on to values. So a list of names and phone numbers in a telephone directory is said to show a mapping from names (keys) to phone numbers (values). In a telephone directory some people might have multiple phone numbers. To stress this "multiple" aspect of telephone directories it is said to be an example of, not just a Map, but a Multimap.