(no subject)

[Neil Mix]

I was just reading through the hashcodes proposal, I see that the  
proposal allows for the (remote) possibility of collisions between keys.

What jumps out at me is the potential for developers to assume that a  
hashcode is the same as a unique ID (especially if some  
implementations enforce uniqueness while others don't), thus leading  
to subtle bugs.  For that reason, I'd like to weigh in with the  
opinion that requiring uniqueness for hashcodes would be really  
nice.  (Alternatively a separate mechanism for generating unique  
object IDs would be nice.)

(I'm sure there are good reasons why enforcing uniqueness amongst  
keys is a burden on implementers, although I'm unaware of what those  
restrictions are.  Just a layman's perspective.)

   -Neil