Why Does Hash Apparently Reorder Its Internal Representation And Other Associated Ponderings

<thoran / thoran.com> wrote in message
news:2d4684b07b9f965e5078fdb46754fac3@shiny...

And would eval %{ instance_of_hash[instance_of_fixnum] } really be so evil? Perhaps that was a little obscure... What's wrong with ordered access, using a numeric element reference as with Array, to Hash? Excepting that the order can't be relied upon, but assume that it could. Even simpler might have been to give an example:

h = {:a => 'a', :b => 'b'}
h[0]
=> 'a'

Similarly one might be able to treat an Array like a Hash as in eval %{ instance_of_array['instance_of_string_representation_of_a_fixnum'] }, such as with:

a = [ 1, 2 ]
a['0']
=> 1

There's no great call for the immediately above I would think, but if I implemented one then I would implement the other also, simply for the purposes of symmetry. I'm not even sure there is any need for either, such that I may be trying to achieve the unnecessary?...

" How would this even work?
     For instance:

hash = { 0 => 'a', 1 => 'b', 'c' => 'd' }

# for me, this prints 'a', 'd', 'b', in that order...
hash.each { |k,e| puts e }

puts hash[1] # what will this print?

     There's no way to tell whether the last line of this code is trying to
access the second element of the hash or the one that maps to the Fixnum
1..."

I was aware of the ambiguity of this and that it might more reasonably mean to access the whole pair, rather than the value.

Perhaps it WOULD be better if were to be the other way?:

h = {:a => 'a', :b => 'b'}
=> {:a => 'a', :b => 'b'}

h[0]
=> {:a => 'a'}

h[[0]]
=> 'a'

In that way you're not required to know the key. The reference is positional and not a reference to an index, by virtue of the double brackets.

The suggested preferred nomenclature of [:a => 'a', :b => 'b'] is inconsistent with the literal instantiation of an empty array a = . Is it an associative array or is it an array? Or is it immaterial until key-value pairs start to appear?

As before, I'm thinking out aloud. You know, pondering.

thoran@thoran.com wrote:

<thoran / thoran.com> wrote in message

[snippage]

As before, I'm thinking out aloud. You know, pondering.

This is very interesting, but in the long run I don't see it
as being the "right" way. Not if the new class is to be
hash-like (and especially not if we're talking about changing
Hash's behavior, which I think most people are against anyway).

Hal