Separating a Hash type from Object

[Jason Orendorff]

On 5/23/07, Brendan Eich <brendan at mozilla.org> wrote:
>      private namespace u;
>      let dict = u::{a:1, b:2, ...};

Earlier you suggested this...
  let dict : Dictionary = {a:1, b:2, ...};

...which is shorter.

> 4. Key-safe membership testing: dict.u::[key] or 'use namespace u;
> dict[key]'.
>
> Comments?

Again, dict.get(key) is clearer and just as short.

If I'm writing a function that takes a dictionary as a parameter
(e.g. "options"), how do I know what namespace to use when
accessing it?

What would be the equivalent of Java's keys() and
containsKey() methods?

I think a Dictionary class is the right thing.

-j