[Python-Dev] getting rid of default object.__hash__ (SF 660098)

[Samuele Pedroni]

At 13:32 22.12.2003 -0800, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> > >Since the default hash simply takes id() of the object, it's easy to
> > >fix such code once the failure is understood though.
> >
> > Jython 2.2a0 on java1.4.0_02 (JIT: null)
> > Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
> >  >>> class C: pass
> > ...
> >  >>> id(C)
> > 1
> >  >>> hash(C)
> > 9174506
> >  >>>
> >
> > I see, but then there should be probably be a different way to spell
> > the default hash, because id is not a sensible option for Jython etc
>
>Ow, you're right.  I bet this is why object.__hash__ was introduced in
>the first place.
>
>We're either back to square one, or we can add a __default_hash__ to
>object which has the default hash implementation -- this isn't very
>pretty but at least it works.

yes, or hash should grow a keyword argument to get access to the default 
impl, which would be id for CPython but not for all Python impls in 
general. The problem is that in general it cannot be expected from Python 
implementations to implement the default hash in terms of id because the 
latter can be much more costly beacuse of its uniqueness constraints.

regards.