Is this somewhat special? I mean, sure. But it wasn't long ago that a hash table was already in the special territory of data structures.
Edit: I should add that I'm not certain this idea would be better. Just more ideas on what you could do.
The creation-order-preserving hash map is basically two data structures in one, it’s more complex and slower than a normal hash map, and IMO it’s rather bizarre and I have never really understood why anyone wants one.
My main "idea" here is to stop from having to check all of the headers on a "per header" basis. Yes, you can make each check faster, as the TRIE does. You can also remove the entire reason to check individual headers by starting a traversal after where the internal headers are.
You could also go with something like making sure the first header is "InternalHeaderCount: N" where you then keep the internal headers segregated form the others by a simple count. (This assumes you have solid control over what is adding the headers internally, of course.)
(I also forgot to give kudos on the blog title. Any Die Hard reference is a good reference. :D )
My last job did rely on ordered-ness of `QMap`, because the elements are listed in a Qt GUI and it could confuse users if those widgets randomly rearranged themselves. That's the only use-case I've personally encountered for an ordered hash map.
While Python provides data structures like this out of the box, designing a big system to require a special, nonstandard data structure to identify private metadata seems like a mistake to me.