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Re: Valid hash keys?
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From:
Nigel Sandever
Date:
February 27, 2005 14:57
Subject:
Re: Valid hash keys?
Message ID:
1103_1109545042@nntp.perl.org
On Sun, 27 Feb 2005 15:36:42 -0700, luke@luqui.org (Luke Palmer) wrote:
> Nigel Sandever writes:
> > On Sun, 27 Feb 2005 02:20:59 -0700, luke@luqui.org (Luke Palmer) wrote:
> > > I forgot an important concretity. Hashes should compare based on the
> > > generic "equal" operator, which knows how to compare apples and apples,
> > > and oranges and oranges, and occasionally a red orange to an apple.
> > >
> > > That is:
> > >
> > > 3 equal 3 ==> true
> > > 3 equal { codeblock } ==> false
> > > 3 equal "3" ==> true
> > >
> >
> > I would have assumed a hash who shape was defined as C<Int> to perform
> > the hashing function directly on the (nominally 32-bit) binary
> > representation Int 2.
>
> I wasn't even thinking about implementation. Sometimes it's good to let
> implementation drive language, but I don't think it's appropriate here.
>
> When we're talking about hashes of everything, there are a couple of
> routes we can take. We can go Java's way and define a .hash method on
> every object. We can go C++'s way and not hash at all, but instead
> define a transitive ordering on every object. We can go Perl's way and
> find a string representation of the object and map the problem back to
> string hashing, which we can do well.
>
> But the biggest problem is that if the user overloads 'equal' on two
> objects, the hash should consider them equal. We could require that to
> overload 'equal', you also have to overload .hash so that you've given
> some thought to the thing. The worry I have is that people will do:
>
> method hash() { 0 }
>
> But I suppose that's okay. That just punts the work off to 'equal',
> albeit in linear time.
>
> That may be the right way to go. Use a Javaesque .hash method with a
> sane default (an introspecting default, perhaps), and use a sane
> equivalent default for 'equal'.
>
> As far as getting 2, 2.0, and "2" to hash to the same object, well, we
> know they're 'equal', so we just need to know how to hash them the same
> way. In fact, I don't believe 2.0 can be represented as a Num. At
> least in Perl 5, it translates itself back to an int. So we can just
> stringify and hash for the scalar types.
>
My thought is that if c<my %hash is shape(Any)> uses the stringyfied values of
the keys, then it is no different to C<my %hash>,
I think it would be useful for shape(Any) be different to an ordinary hash, and
hashing the binary representation of the key, so that
(Int)2, (Num)2, (String)2, (uint)2 (uint4)2 etc.
would be a useful way of collating things according to their "type" rather than
their value....?
>
> Luke
njs.
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