On Apr 15, 6:42 pm, "Javier Bezos" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Here is a document giving good reasons for indexing to start at > > zero, as in Python. > >http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EWD831.html > > The author has done a bit: > >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dijkstra > > Dijkstra's argument is obsolete, as it is based on > how array length was computed many years ago -- if > we have an array a = b..e, then the lenght of a > is e-b (half open range). Good at low level > programming. > > But a quarter of a century after we know concepts > are much better than low level programming and > explicit computations -- if we have an array > a = b..e, then the length of a should be a.length() > (or a.length(b,e)), and it is independent of > arbitrary ranges, index bases, or even steps > (eg, {-4, -2, 0, 2, 4}). > > Of course, the index base should be always the > same _by default_ (individual lists could require > another index base, and that's fine). Otherwise > it would a mess, as you said. > > Javier > -----------------------------http://www.texytipografia.com
Hi Javier, You seem to have missed out array *indexing* in your argument, or is array indexing obsolete? - Paddy. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list