#### 18.1.1 Hash-Table Operations ¶

Figure 18–1 lists some defined names that are applicable to hash tables. The following rules apply to hash tables.

–

  A hash table can only associate one value with a given key. If an attempt is made to add a second value for a given key, the second value will replace the first. Thus, adding a value to a hash table is a destructive operation; the hash table is modified.

–

  There are four kinds of hash tables: those whose keys are compared with eq, those whose keys are compared with eql, those whose keys are compared with equal, and

  those whose keys are compared with equalp.

–

  Hash tables are created by make-hash-table. gethash is used to look up a key and find the associated value. New entries are added to hash tables using setf with gethash. remhash is used to remove an entry. For example:

       (setq a (make-hash-table)) ⇒  #<HASH-TABLE EQL 0/120 32536573>
       (setf (gethash 'color a) 'brown) ⇒  BROWN
       (setf (gethash 'name a) 'fred) ⇒  FRED
       (gethash 'color a) ⇒  BROWN, true
       (gethash 'name a) ⇒  FRED, true
       (gethash 'pointy a) ⇒  NIL, false

  In this example, the symbols `color` and `name` are being used as keys, and the symbols `brown` and `fred` are being used as the associated values. The hash table has two items in it, one of which associates from `color` to `brown`, and the other of which associates from `name` to `fred`.

–

  A key or a value may be any object.

–

  The existence of an entry in the hash table can be determined from the secondary value returned by gethash.

      clrhash           hash-table-p     remhash
      gethash           make-hash-table  sxhash
      hash-table-count  maphash

         Figure 18–1: Hash-table defined names