Issue: HASH-TABLE-PRINTED-REPRESENTATION

[Jon L White <edsel!jonl@labrea.stanford.edu>]

Touretzky actually said he would alter his proposal to account for the
:rehash-size and :rehash-threshold omissions; but this version of the 
proposaldoesn't show that.  I remember remarking that you still can't
call the objects "first class" if the printed representation cannot be
read in as an equivalent copy; and the fact that CL has some other datatypes
that aren't "first class" doesn't argue for doing something substandard
for hash-tables.  I don't seem to have a copy of the mail from Dave in
which he said he would alter his proposal.


  Date: Mon, 23 May 88 15:37:48 PDT
  From: Jon L White <edsel!jonl@labrea.stanford.edu>
  To: labrea!Dave.Touretzky@CS.CMU.EDU
  Cc: cl-cleanup@sail.stanford.edu
  In-Reply-To: Dave.Touretzky@B.GP.CS.CMU.EDU's message of Mon, 23 May 88 11:27:58 EDT <361.580404478@DST.BOLTZ.CS.CMU.EDU>
  Subject: HASH-TABLE-PRINTED-REPRESENTATION

  re: One problem with the currently proposed #H notation is that it provides 
      no way to specify a rehash-size or rehash-threshold.  This should not be 
      a fatal flaw, though.  The #() notation is also incomplete: it cannot
      indicate whether the vector has a fill pointer, nor can it show when the
      element-type is something more specific than T.  The latter problem is 
      also shared by #nA notation.

  I think this is a fatal flaw.  The fact that *some* complex classes of
  arrays also share this fatal flaw is no argument for retaining it.  It
  is still the case that simple arrays of the more common element types
  do not have the flaw; and several years ago there was some discussion
  on how to fix other manifestations of the flaw on multi-dimensional arrays.


  -- JonL --