Home/Low-level design/LRU Cache

LRU Cache

Recency ownership and bounded cache state

Ownership and transitions

A cache owns recency as well as values. JavaScript Map preserves insertion order, but setting an existing key does not move it; a refresh must establish the desired order deliberately. Missing reads must not refresh anything, and capacity zero still validates requests. Expected point operations are O(1); detached item snapshots cost O(entries).

JavaScript boundaries

Use native classes with per-instance state and plain object/array snapshots. Object assignment shares a reference; copy retained inputs and every outward mutable container, including nested arrays. null means absence. Map handles arbitrary string keys safely, including "__proto__"; do not confuse a missing key with zero or an empty string. Domain validation uses RangeError. Numeric inputs must satisfy Number.isSafeInteger, so booleans, fractions, infinities, and NaN are invalid where an integer is required. All documented aggregate results and timestamp-plus-duration sums fit the safe-integer range. Strings use exact case-sensitive equality; lexical order compares JavaScript UTF-16 code units. Calls are serialized and synchronous.

JavaScript
const internal = ["initial"];
const snapshot = [...internal];
snapshot.length = 0;
console.assert(internal.length === 1);

A detached snapshot protects ownership; the service still has to validate and commit a coherent transition.

Put it into practice

Implement the exercise in a full-screen workspace, then run its tests.

Open practice
Next lessonRate Limiter