Re: plists, alists, and hashtables

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Wed, 5 Aug 2015 14:36:50 -0700 (PDT) Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> 
wrote: 

>> So as a first cut, maybe <(k1 . v1) (k2 . v2)> and
>> <<(k1 . v1) (k2 . v2)>> would be a good syntax
...
DA> Unfortunately, in Emacs Lisp we do not (yet) have reader macros.
DA> But that is all the *more* (not less) reason not to hard-code
DA> such syntax restrictions into the definition of Lisp itself.

DA> Working on adding reader macros to Emacs Lisp would be (very!)
DA> helpful.  Hard-coding < and << syntax is not helpful (IMHO).

OK, I agree, except that it should be globally enabled, so whatever the
syntax, it can become a standard way to express a map.  That's the
point; I can already use hashtables just fine.  It needs to be accessible.

Can anyone explain to me what's missing in order to implement the reader
macro that translates «xyz» to some version of #s(hash-table ...)?

Ted