Is there any advantage to the Prototype Hash object beyond the keys, values, and inspect methods? Hashing is inherent in basic JS objects...wouldn't using something like Hash incur unnecessary overhead?
Prototype's Hash object also has convenient merge() and toQueryString() methods. This article shows the merge() method. Here's a link to an excellent reference to the Hash object:
You can pass a JS object as a parameter to the $H() Prototype method; the return value is one of these hash objects. At the very least, Prototype saves the development/debugging time associated with creating your own hash utility object.