This page written by [DKF]
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What is good about [Tcl]'s arrays?  Their compact syntax for common operations.

What is not so good about [Tcl]'s arrays?  You have to use a hash-table for the mapping from keys to values.

Would would make things extra cool?  If we could take arrays and put a new back-end on them based on [list]s, [dict]ionaries, or even something more exotic.  There have been attempts to do this in the past ([BLT]'s vectors spring to mind here)

Why do this to arrays instead of putting magic conversion on values?  We'd have a proper named location to store the metadata describing how the array is implemented.

What is going to be hard?  Well, [trace]s are definitely tricky, as is [upvar] and friends, as they both (currently) require that your mapping mechanism hands out references to a '''Var''' structure, and that's not something that you can really map nicely onto a [Tcl_Obj] as it is an updatable structure.

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