4 ms·

I may be entirely wrong here... but doesn't that create a tree of cons cells (more concretely a list of tuples) instead of a true hash-table? Would (gethash ..

I may be entirely wrong here... but doesn't that create a tree of cons cells (more concretely a list of tuples) instead of a true hash-table? Would (gethash ...) work on the created structure in constant time?

wingo 18y ago
That's the point, it's not a hash table -- it's an association list. People don't just use them because they're easier to write, they have nice functional characteristics. (Yes, hash tables are better for many things. I liked the #{} hack, actually.)