Since there's a bit of discussion on this topic, I'll let y'all in on the
private note I sent to Andreas on this subject.

He replied, saying that the VSE implementation (see bottom) offers something
that bitAnd: 16r3FFFFFFF doesn't.

Cheers,

---==> Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: Norton, Chris 
Sent: Wednesday, August 07, 2002 5:45 PM
To: 'Andreas Raab'
Subject: RE: [RFC] Integer hash


Frankly, you're the expert as far as I'm concerned Andreas.  FWIW, you get
my uneducated vote for inclusion.  :-)

Just one thing though.  When I looked up the implementation of the
LargeInteger>>hash in VisualAge Smalltalk, it looks like this:

LargeInteger>>hash

	"Answer an Integer representing the hash
	 value of the receiver."

	<primitive: VMprLargeIntegerHash>
	^self bitAnd: 16r3FFFFFFF

I can only presume that the primitive call means that #hash is implemented
in the VM.  Maybe Squeak's VM should implement the LargeInteger hash?
Perhaps that might speed it up even more?

Cheers,

---==> Chris

PS>  This is what Visual Smalltalk Enterprise does:

LargeInteger>>hash
        "Answer the integer hash value of the receiver."
    | answer size |
    size := self byteSize.
    answer := ( self at: size ) bitAnd: 16r1F.
    1 to: 3 do: [ :index |
        answer := ( answer bitShift: 8 ) + ( self at: size - index ) ].
    ^answer