[r6rs-discuss] [Formal] Hashtable issues
AndrevanTonder
andre at het.brown.edu
Mon Nov 13 20:12:31 EST 2006
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This message is a formal comment which was submitted to formal-comment at r6rs.org, following the requirements described at: http://www.r6rs.org/process.html
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Name : Andre van Tonder
Email : andre at het.brown.edu
Type :
Priority : minor
Component : Hashtables
Version : 5.91
Pages : 117
Dependencies: None
Summary:
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Minor issues in hashtable API.
Description:
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- In the rationale of hash-table-copy with immutable, it is stated that
"Also, a library may choose to export a hash table which cannot be
changed by clients."
This may not be the best rationale, because it suggests that this is
useful for access control that makes the table read-only to the client.
However, the exporting "server" library won't be able to change the hash
table copy either. So "changed by clients" is misleading.
Also, this has nothing to do with libraries, since any local
scope can "export" a read-only hashtable by returning an immutable
copy in this way.
- How often are "hash-table-keys" and "hash-table-values" really used, and
even when they are, are they really a good abstraction?
Since they are trivially expressible in terms of -fold, as stated in
the document, please consider dropping these.
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