bug#33653: 27.0.50; Change Gnus obarrays-as-hash-tables into real hash tables

[Eric Abrahamsen]

On 12/11/18 20:23 PM, Lars Ingebrigtsen wrote:
> Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net> writes:
>
>>> Here's the next thing: turning Gnus' obarrays-as-hash-tables into real
>>> hash tables. Gnus currently stores information about groups by coercing
>>> group names to unibyte, interning them in custom obarrays, and then
>>> setting their symbol-value to whatever value needs to be stored. I think
>>> all this was written before Emacs had actual hash tables.
>>
>> Also hounding Lars for his opinion...
>
> Using real hash tables sounds nice, if there's no negative performance
> impact.

I've pushed another commit to scratch/gnus-hashtables, fixing a small
bug in gnus-bklg.el. Otherwise, I've been using this branch for a couple
months now, with no ill effects.

I guess what I'd like to do is squash the first commit with the third
(the changes that actually implement the hash tables), but leave the
second aside for now (the one that stops doing internal
encoding/decoding).

That ought to be done eventually, but I'll need more time to figure it
out, and would like to get more exposure for this refactoring in the
meantime.

Eric