safer, more foolproof hash: make hash return an opaque value, and take that type as the second argument #57055
Description
The hash doc string says:
only use the output of another hash function as the second argument
It'd be easy to enforce this with dispatch in v2, if hash returned an opaque type and took the same type as the second argument. If UInt isn't accepted as the second argument there's less potential for error and confusion.
Something like this:
"""
HashValue
Constructed by [`hash`](@ref), opaque.
"""
struct HashValue
v::UInt
# there's no constructors and this function is not `public`
global function new_hash_value(v::UInt)
new(v)
end
end
"""
xor(::HashValue, ::HashValue)::HashValue
Combine two hash values in a symmetric manner.
"""
function xor(l::HashValue, r::HashValue)
xor(l.v, r.v)
end
"""
hash(::Any, ::HashValue)::HashValue
...
"""
function hash endCurrently a common practice that would break is seeding hash with UInt constants. This would have to be fixed by changing const seed = 0xdeadbeef to const seed = hash(0xdeadbeef). Perhaps a nullary method should be provided, turning this into const seed = hash()?