On Fri, Sep 11, 2015 at 12:00 PM, Taylan Ulrich Bayırlı/Kammer <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

Obviously the better (best?) name for this is hash-table-pop!. It's
unfortunate that this conflicts with Gauche, but shouldn't one use

(pop! (hash-table-ref ht k) x)

for popping from a generic place, obviating the need for any *-pop!
operations specialized for different data structures?

Yes, that would be a good name.

The syntax is fine, but shouldn't be relied upon to exist. At a minimum, there should be a procedural interface.

OK, that's less efficient. I would question how often that difference
in efficiency is relevant though. If we absolutely want the efficient
push/pop then maybe we should name them hash-table-update/pop! and such.
Or let users define that when they want it and leave it out of the spec.

It's O(1) vs. O(N), which quickly matters, especially when it's executed in a loop.