-/* If ENTRY matches an entry already in the hash table, return the pointer
- to the entry from the table. Otherwise, insert ENTRY and return ENTRY.
- Return NULL if the storage required for insertion cannot be allocated.
- This implementation does not support duplicate entries or insertion of
- NULL. */
-
-void *
-hash_insert (Hash_table *table, const void *entry)
+/* Return -1 upon memory allocation failure.
+ Return 1 if insertion succeeded.
+ Return 0 if there is already a matching entry in the table,
+ and in that case, if MATCHED_ENT is non-NULL, set *MATCHED_ENT
+ to that entry.
+
+ This interface is easier to use than hash_insert when you must
+ distinguish between the latter two cases. More importantly,
+ hash_insert is unusable for some types of ENTRY values. When using
+ hash_insert, the only way to distinguish those cases is to compare
+ the return value and ENTRY. That works only when you can have two
+ different ENTRY values that point to data that compares "equal". Thus,
+ when the ENTRY value is a simple scalar, you must use hash_insert0.
+ ENTRY must not be NULL. */
+int
+hash_insert0 (Hash_table *table, void const *entry, void const **matched_ent)