John Tobey <jtobey@john-edwin-tobey.org> wrote > I am becoming discouraged in this effort. The alternatives I see are > to put an array or bit vector in the assign op indicating which > elements are hashes (probably no better than the above) or to split it > all out in a new op AASSIGN_HEAVY function (not worth it). I used to believe that the AVHV stuff was a Good Thing, but the number of worms that have crawled out as a result of the attempts to "get it right" have made me change my mind. A viable scheme needs to have the mechanism better hidden, perhaps by putting the key-to-index mapping inside some magic. And there probably needs to be more critical discussion of what this mechanism is actually for. What we currently have should be deprecated or otherwise suppressed. Mike Guy