range.c

HI --

I have been working on improving Range class today per discussions on 
ruby-talk. First I created a prototype in pure Ruby --that looks great. Then 
I delimited the changes into two groups: those readily doable (will not cause 
back-breakage) and those that are not.

So now I am working on the C source to incorporate readily doable changes 
--the main of which is to add an exclude_start? parameter. I have already 
done this and tested it. Works well. The only problem I have is how to change 
the hash method:

static VALUE
range_hash(range)
    VALUE range;
{
    long hash = EXCL(range);
    VALUE v;

    v = rb_hash(rb_ivar_get(range, id_beg));
    hash ^= v << 1;
    v = rb_hash(rb_ivar_get(range, id_end));
    hash ^= v << 9;
    hash ^= EXCL(range) << 24;
    hash ^= EXCLB(range) << 25;   /* 25? what number? */

    return LONG2FIX(hash);
}

Also, I am using 1.8.2pre2 code, should I be using 1.9?

Thanks,
T.

P.S. I will discuss further once I fix the above.