RE: Visible Hash-Tables

[ELIOT@cs.umass.edu]

Both INSPECT and DESCRIBE are "standard" CLtL functions.  The results
are not READable, but the original question was for a way to allow
students to look inside hash-tables.  INSPECT may be too complex
for students (I don't use INSPECT) but DESCRIBE should not be.
However, CLtL does not specify that either of these functions will
show you the content of Hash-Tables.  Would it be resonable to
specify for each data type what is the minimal information that
these functions must show?  Better still for DESCRIBE, at least,
would be a portable public domain implementation.

I think a more detailed specification of DESCRIBE and INSPECT
would be useful.  I have been disapointed because information
was not printed that *obviously* (to me) should have been.
A standard could list the components of compound objects that
must be printed, without trying to specify the format.