From: Dan Sugalski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Wed, 8 Jun 2005 16:22:35 -0400
At 4:05 PM -0400 6/8/05, Tolkin, Steve wrote:
>. . . Dan Sugalski says: "I'd just pitch an exception if code
>deletes an entry ..."
>
>Perhaps this is OK, because this code is intended for internal use
>only. But people like to reuse code, and if anyone writes an
>ordered hash module on top of this code it will have a bug.
Which is why it ought not get reused.
The whole point of the original ordered hash was to support lexical
pads as fast as possible while still allowing by-name lookup for
introspective code. Doing anything that compromises fast array-based
lookup would be ill-advised for that. If it makes sublclassing tough,
well... subclassing continuations is likely going to be problematic
too, but that's fine . . .
Maybe the problem lies in thinking of this as an "ordered hash" when it
really functions as a "keyed array." People expect to be able to delete
hash entries, but not always array entries. So a name change might make
inability to delete less of an issue.
-- Bob Rogers
http://rgrjr.dyndns.org/
