On Saturday, 1 August 2015 at 09:35:53 UTC, DLearner wrote:
Does the D language set in stone that the first element of an
array _has_ to be index zero?
For the builtin slice types? Yes, set in stone.
Wouldn't starting array elements at one avoid the common
'off-by-one' logic error, it does
seem more natural to begin a count at 1.
Actually, maybe even better to allow array definitions of form
int foo[x:y];
(y >= x) creating integer variables foo[x], foo[x+1],...,foo[y].
I think the (very old) IBM PL/I language was like this.
See
https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EWD831.html
As other commenters have/will point out, you can easily define a
custom type in D that behaves as you describe, and - Dijkstra
notwithstanding - there are valid uses for such things.
