Should .## remain in Scala 3?

Dotty
1

A mentoree was looking at a hashCode implementation yesterday asked what .## was. As I remember, it’s just an alias for .hashCode that’s been around since the early days.

Given Scala 3’s design goals of simplicity and consistency, should we also deprecate .## in favour of just normal .hashCode?

1 Like
2

Hey @japgolly it’s actually not an alias for hashCode, since it handles null values (null.## is 0)

2 Likes
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It also handles cooperative equality, so that 5.## == 5.0.##, which is important because 5 == 5.0 in Scala.

4 Likes
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Oh ok, interesting. Thank you both, I didn’t know that.

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Isn’t it there to work on AnyVal as well as AnyRef, as opposed to .hashCode which is only defined on java.lang.Object a.k.a. AnyRef?