[racket] question about implementation of hash-ref!

Making it the default behavior would require it to be a macro instead of an
ordinary function, so you’d lose the ability to pass it around as a
function. Given that implementing a short circuit macro on top of hash-ref!
is as simple as (define-syntax-rule (hash-ref!! table key expr) (hash-ref!
table key (thunk expr))), whoever made the decision probably figured that
the loss of the ability to use it as a first-class function wasn’t worth
making a one-line macro default behavior.
​

On Fri, Nov 7, 2014 at 1:08 PM, Matthew Butterick <mb at mbtype.com> wrote:

> Since `hash-ref!` includes `or`-like functionality, is there a reason it's
> not implemented with short-circuit logic similar to `or`?
>
> In other words, the function `hash-ref!` is invoked thus:
>
> (hash-ref! hashtable key new-value-if-needed)
>
> What I notice is that if you put an expression in the new-value position,
> like so:
>
> (hash-ref! hashtable key (expression-that-produces-value))
>
> Then this expression will always be evaluated before the function is
> called.
>
> But this seems wasteful, since if 'key' exists in 'hashtable', the
> expression won't be needed.
>
> `hash-ref!` will also take a thunk, so you can manually delay evaluation
> of the value expression by wrapping it in λ:
>
> (hash-ref! hashtable key (λ () (expression-that-produces-value)))
>
> But I'm curious why delayed evaluation isn't the default behavior.
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