From: Gavin Sinclair <gsinclair@...>
Date: 2004-03-04T08:38:31+09:00
Subject: Re: why are Hashes so unsorted? what's your solution?

On Thursday, March 4, 2004, 10:07:15 AM, Hal wrote:

> [good comments snipped]

> The term "hash" is so much more fun and elegant than "associative
> array." Let's come up with a term that is both elegant and accurate
> for an ordered entity with a hash-like interface.

When I was at uni, we were taught that the interface was "dictionary"
(maps keys to values) and the common implementations are hash, tree,
...

There's only so much you can reasonably dissociate interface from
implementation here, though: hashes are unordered; binary trees have
three orders to choose from!  And of course people care about
performance and choose different implementations for different data
sets and use cases.

As for coming up with a term, I wouldn't worry about it too much.
What "order" are you talking about?  Key order or insert order? :)

Cheers,
Gavin