Various Topics on Programming

..ir.. ..usbour..

Someone says that in answer to the old debate of whether arrays
indexing should start from 0 or 1 , his suggestion that it should
start from 1/2 did not receive proper attention.

Does anyone know who said it and exactly how it was phrased ?

..bertwesse.. ..hoo.c..

On Jun 7, 11:38 pm, Spiros Bousbouras <spi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Someone says that in answer to the old debate of whether arrays
> indexing should start from 0 or 1 , his suggestion that it should
> start from 1/2 did not receive proper attention.
>
> Does anyone know who said it and exactly how it was phrased ?


Stan Kelly-Bootle:

"Should array indices start at 0 or 1? My compromise of 0.5 was
rejected without, I thought, proper consideration."

..ir.. ..usbour..

On 8 Jun, 05:55, "robertwess...@yahoo.com" <robertwess...@yahoo.com>
wrote:
> On Jun 7, 11:38 pm, Spiros Bousbouras <spi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Someone says that in answer to the old debate of whether arrays
> > indexing should start from 0 or 1 , his suggestion that it should
> > start from 1/2 did not receive proper attention.
>
> > Does anyone know who said it and exactly how it was phrased ?
>
> Stan Kelly-Bootle:
>
> "Should array indices start at 0 or 1? My compromise of 0.5 was
> rejected without, I thought, proper consideration."

Thank you , that was very fast.

..Falcon..

Spiros Bousbouras wrote:
>
> Someone says that in answer to the old debate of whether arrays
> indexing should start from 0 or 1 , his suggestion that it should
> start from 1/2 did not receive proper attention.
>
> Does anyone know who said it and exactly how it was phrased ?

That would create interesting effects, since the habit is to round
up in North America, round down in Europe.

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..ber.. ..ltm..

"robertwessel2@yahoo.com" wrote:
Spiros Bousbouras wrote:
>> Someone says that in answer to the old debate of whether arrays
>> indexing should start from 0 or 1 , his suggestion that it should
>> start from 1/2 did not receive proper attention.
>>
>> Does anyone know who said it and exactly how it was phrased ?

>Stan Kelly-Bootle:
>
>"Should array indices start at 0 or 1? My compromise of 0.5 was
>rejected without, I thought, proper consideration."

Not what the OP asked, but still 0.18% on topic:

Edsger Dijkstra's - "Why numbering should start at zero" at EWD's
archive:

http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd08xx/EWD831.PDF

Roberto Waltman

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..ckdropp..

Roberto Waltman <usenet@rwaltman.net> wrote in
news:rdaj63dg087s3e0fr596suqf9f0k02g4ac@4ax.com:

*snip*

>
> Not what the OP asked, but still 0.18% on topic:
>
> Edsger Dijkstra's - "Why numbering should start at zero" at EWD's
> archive:
>
> http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd08xx/EWD831.PDF
>
> Roberto Waltman

Why not allow the programmer to specify any range he/she wants? Forget
this "start at 0 or 1" thing, I want to start some ranges at 15 and end
at 32. Ada lets me do this sort of thing, C++ not so much. (I know, I
can do an enum and start the range at "fifteen" or something, but numbers
are easier to scan for. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/writing-
numbers.html)

Puckdropper
--
Wise is the man who attempts to answer his question before asking it.

To email me directly, send a message to puckdropper (at) fastmail.fm

..bertwesse.. ..hoo.c..

On Jun 8, 2:30 pm, Puckdropper <puckdrop...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Why not allow the programmer to specify any range he/she wants? Forget
> this "start at 0 or 1" thing, I want to start some ranges at 15 and end
> at 32. Ada lets me do this sort of thing, C++ not so much. (I know, I
> can do an enum and start the range at "fifteen" or something, but numbers
> are easier to scan for. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/writing-
> numbers.html)


Well, I certainly don't want to start this particular flame fest
again, so perhaps I should divert it by first mentioning my preferred
brace placement style for C... ;-)

Being able to specify a range is fairly common, and certainly in
anything with a strong Pascal heritage (like Ada).

My experience has been that bases only rarely something other than
zero or one, but if you're going to allow that to vary on an array-by-
array basis, you might as well allow the range, just because it
probably falls fairly naturally out of whatever syntax you've used to
declare that the array is base zero or one anyway.

More commonly when the situation needs something more complex than a
simple base zero or base one index, you really want something more
along the lines of an ***ociative or keyed lookup.

And in C++, you can certainly create your own type and define
operator[](int).