[Haskell-cafe] FiniteMap-like module for unordered keys?

[Jorge Adriano Aires]

Hello, 

> A hash-table becomes rather useless without mutable state AFAICS.
> Without it, one might almost just as well use a list of pairs...

Could you please elaborate? Is there motive why an Hash Table, implemented as 
FiniteMap of Lists, for instance, wouldn't be worth to using over a simple 
List? (This wouldn't help G. Klyne of course). I've always wondered why a 
non-monadic version of is not provided in the GHC libs... 

J.A.