Forums Scripts & Popups hsh file vs. txt file

Can someone clearify $hget for me? Lets call the hash table info. The uniformity of each item is:

screenname1 userhost time channel last_said

Then if: set %a screenname1

So would $get(info,a%) return 'userhost' or 'userhost time channel last_said'

To retrieve a particular key of an item, like time for screenname1, $get(info,a%,2).item

???