Based on the name of the identifier, I'm wondering if $hash() is used when assigning buckets to each item, since it's very prone to having identical 24-bit hashes to similar strings.
maroon: Yes, $hash(,32) is used for hash tables.
Also, I wasn't able to reproduce successive /hload and /hsave operations to reverse the ordering of the items as they appear in the file. I might not be understanding it right.
//var %id = testing.hlist | hmake %id | hadd %id a a | hadd %id b b | hadd %id c c | hsave %id %id | loadbuf -api %id | hfree %id | hmake %id | hload %id %id | remove %id | hsave %id %id | loadbuf -api %id | remove %id | hfree %id
