On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 9:24 PM, Benjamin Peterson wrote:
..
> Why not just hash a tuple?

There are a few reasons, but neither is good enough to have another
round of code review :-)

1. It is strange to have the hash function allocate new objects.  If
that was a type frequently used as a dict key, I would be concerned
about a possibility that dictionary lookup may trigger gc.

2. While reproducing hash(tuple) is a good starting point, there may
be a reason to choose different values for the magic constants.

3. If you don't want to mess with hash(tuple) complexity, a simple xor
of start/stop/step hashes (maybe with a check to prevent accidental -1
return) should be good enough.