From: Markus <markus@...>
Date: 2004-09-05T00:55:41+09:00
Subject: Re: Hashes and ordering

On Fri, 2004-09-03 at 20:39, Hal Fulton wrote:

> I don't want to go into detail about what I'm thinking at the moment.


But my point was, without some details it is very hard to respond
meaningfully to your questions.  At least, you seem to see a single
meaningful was to connect what to me are marginally related things.

Do you mean only that Hash.== should act as if there were some
consistent ordering of the key=>value pairs?  If so, this could be
accomplished easily with out ever actually ordering them.

On the other hand, do you mean that you would like Hash.each et. al. to
proceed through the items in the hash in a predictable way?  If so:

        Do you mean that the order should be determined by the keys,
        regardless of how they are inserted?  If so, how do you want to
        order items whose keys are not comparable?
        
        Do you mean that the order should be determined by the order in
        which the pairs are added?  If so, what do you do when the value
        at a key is replaced?  Or just changed (internally modified)?  
        
        Do you mean that the order should be determined by some other
        factor, and if so, what?
        
Or are you just wanting arrays that take arbitrary subscripts?


-- MarkusQ