From: Robert Klemme <shortcutter@...>
Date: 2007-11-23T17:46:06+09:00
Subject: Re: Ordered Hash Usefulness

2007/11/23, Daniel Sheppard <daniels@pronto.com.au>:
>
> > Well, that's just /one/ way to order a Hash.  You could as
> > well order a
> > Hash by the key's natural order (<=>).
>
> Yes, but nothing extra needs to be added to Hash to get a
> natural order enumeration - A hash.sort.each sorts that out.

Which would still be something different than a Hash that
automatically maintains this order.  Granted, insertions would be
O(log(N)) instead of O(1) but lookups could still be O(1).  And you
save the memory overhead of Hash#sort.

> An ordered hash almost always refers to insertion order, as
> that's the order that is unrecoverable from a regular hash.

I just find the terminology a bit muddy because "ordered" in itself is
too ambiguous.  That's all I wanted to point out all the time.

Kind regards

robert

-- 
use.inject do |as, often| as.you_can - without end