From: James Britt <jamesUNDERBARb@...>
Date: 2004-09-04T12:45:31+09:00
Subject: Re: Hashes and ordering

Markus wrote:
> To see why this seems odd, let me recast your question in terms of
> arrays:
> 
> <analogy>
> Does anyone depend on these arrays being equal?
> 
>    x = Array.new; x[1] = 2; x[3] = 4
>    y = Array.new; y[3] = 4; y[1] = 2
>    x == y            #  => true
> 
> Or does anyone have code that depends in some other way on the fact that
> the order in which items are added too an array is NOT significant?
> </analogy>
> 


This seems like apples and oranges.  One definition of an array is that 
it's a contiguous series of memory storage locations; people take for 
granted that order doesn't matter.  Change this	 and it's not an array 
any more.

But with hashes, allowing two hashes to have some notion of equality by 
virtue of having the exact same key/value pairs does not conflict with 
the essential behavior of a hash.

James