From: Dave Burt <burtdav@...>
Date: 2004-09-04T17:00:16+09:00
Subject: Re: Hashes and ordering

I think I agree with Matz that as Hash.equal? shouldn't be changing, but an
ordered hash could be useful even if its .equal? was limited in that way. It
wouldn't break Hash for order to be maintained. But Hal's right in thinking
that this the ordered hash ideally is a new beast, a slightly different
concept from Hash, that deserves its own .equal?.

"Yukihiro Matsumoto" <matz@ruby-lang.org> wrote:
> Hash value orders (if any) should not affect equality check to honor
> tradition, I think.
>
> Predictable order is a subset of unpredictable orders ;-)

"Hal Fulton" <hal9000@hypermetrics.com> wrote:
> does anyone depend on these hashes being equal?
>    x = {1=>2, 3=>4}
>    y = {3=>4, 1=>2}
>    x == y            #  => true
>
> Or does anyone have code that depends in some other way
> on the fact that the ordering in a hash is NOT predictable?