why won't gethash return my key's value?

Question

Experienced lisp, scheme, clojure programmer making the move to elisp from python for automating routine, everyday, basic tasks: I got an enormous surprise from the following in ielm

ELISP> (setq h2 (make-hash-table))
#s(hash-table size 65 test eql rehash-size 1.5 rehash-threshold 0.8 data ())
ELISP> (puthash "a" 1 h2)
1 (#o1, #x1, ?\C-a)
ELISP> (gethash "a" h2)
nil

huh? The key and the value appear to be present:

ELISP> h2
#s(hash-table size 65 test eql rehash-size 1.5 rehash-threshold 0.8 data ("a" 1))

/slaps forehead. I must be missing something totally obvious. Info says:

-- Function: gethash key table &optional default
 This function looks up KEY in TABLE, and returns its associated
 VALUE—or DEFAULT, if KEY has no association in TABLE.

great. Let's see if we can get gethash to return anything other than nil:

ELISP> (gethash "a" h2 'fubar) 
fubar

wow. Ok, I'm a lot dumber than I thought. What on earth am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

The default membership test for a hash table is eql. If you'd like to use a string as the key, set it to equal instead:

(setf hash (make-hash-table :test #'equal))
(puthash "a" 1 hash)
(gethash "a" hash)                      ; ==> 1

For reference, here's the relevant part of the docstring:

make-hash-table is a built-in function in `C source code'.

(make-hash-table &rest KEYWORD-ARGS)

Create and return a new hash table.

Arguments are specified as keyword/argument pairs. The following arguments are defined:

:test TEST -- TEST must be a symbol that specifies how to compare keys. Default is eql. Predefined are the tests eq, eql, and equal. User-supplied test and hash functions can be specified via define-hash-table-test.