From ... From: Erik Naggum Subject: Re: Why can't a hash table be read/written as #S(HASH-TABLE ...)? Date: 1999/04/09 Message-ID: <3132642870691300@naggum.no>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 464384880 References: mail-copies-to: never Organization: Naggum Software; +47 8800 8879; http://www.naggum.no Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp * Tim Bradshaw | I think the other argument against it is that you might not want to | commit implementations to saying what information there is about a | hashtable. As well as the keys & values you might want other kinds of | information -- what is the test function (and what if an implementation | allows test functions other than the standard set -- now you need some | way of printing arbitrary functions perhaps)? How big is it, how fast | does it grow?. I don't see a problem with #.(make-hash-table ...) except it would have been nice if one could "prime" a hash table in the MAKE-HASH-TABLE form, as in keyword arguments named INITIAL-CONTENTS (like MAKE-ARRAY) and/or INITIAL-KEYS and INITIAL-VALUES. the lack of such an argument is a liability, not just when loading saved hash tables, but when building them the first time. if we had a standard list notation for hash table initial contents (as we have for arrays), it would be trivial to create a print syntax for hash-tables, too. so let's attack the basic problem. #:Erik