RE: [PATCH] Add new function to test whether a key is present in a hash table.

[Drew Adams]

> Such a function is useful because in Emacs Lisp, 'gethash' cannot
> return whether the key is present as in Common Lisp, and using
> 'gethash' alone to test for presence is nontrivial.

Glad to see this.  Everyone was coding their own (in Lisp).

> +While it might be tempting to use @code{gethash} to check whether a
> +key is present in a hash table, keep in mind that you often need to
> +distinguish between @var{key} being absent and @var{key} being mapped
> +to @var{default}.  To easily distinguish between these two cases,
> +there's another function to explicitly check whether a key is present:
> +
> address@hidden hash-table-contains-p key table
> +This function looks up @var{key} in @var{table}; it returns @code{t}
> +if @var{key} is present, and @code{nil} otherwise.  The associated
> +value is ignored.

1. I don't think we need to say "The associated value is
ignored".  Nothing suggests that it would be used in any way.

2. The function name should have `key' in it, I think.  Suggestion:
`hash-table-contains-key-p' or even just `hash-table-key-p'.

3. Another possibility could be to return, as the true value,
a cons of the value associated with the key.  IOW, instead
of returning `t' we would return `(THE-VALUE)'.   If this
is not particularly costly it might be a bit more useful.

___

Related: Bug #30458 asks for a function that tests whether
a hash table contains an entry with a given value.  More
precisely, it would return the list of keys with that value,
so nil would mean the value is absent altogether.