On Mon, Jul 3, 2017 at 9:39 AM, Marc Nieper-Wißkirchen <xxxxxx@nieper-wisskirchen.de> wrote:

We already have ‘alist->mapping’ where earlier keys take precedence. The rationale for this choice of precedence is to use the same convention as ‘alist->hash-table’ from SRFI 125.

The rationale for that is compatibility with `assoc`, which searches no further than it has to and therefore is earliest-first as a natural result.

IMO, alists are insufficiently appreciated.  I've seen code that used hash tables for maps that would never grow past 20-30, a point at which the overhead of a hash table probably dominates linear search.

-- 
John Cowan          http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan        xxxxxx@ccil.org
Half the lies they tell about me are true.
        --Tallulah Bankhead, American actress