On 08/07/2010 03:38 PM, Steven D'Aprano wrote: > On Sat, 07 Aug 2010 14:00:59 +0200, Thomas Jollans wrote: > >> On 08/07/2010 05:05 AM, Default User wrote: >>> >From "the emperor's new clothes" department: >>> >>> 1) Why do Python lists start with element [0], instead of element [1]? >>> "Common sense" would seem to suggest that lists should start with [1]. >> >> As others have pointed out, there is a nice argument to be made for >> zero-based indices. However, the killer reason is: "it's what everybody >> else does." > > I'll have you know that there are still some Pascal programmers in the > world, thank you. > > > >> As it stands, the only perceived problem with zero-based >> indices is that it's one of the many tiny confusions that new >> programmers face. On the other hand, it's the way nearly every other >> popular programming language does it, and therefore, it's the way almost >> every programmer likes to think about sequences. > > It didn't take me long to get used to thinking in zero-based indexes, but > years later, I still find it hard to *talk* in zero-based indexes. It's > bad enough saying that the first element in a list in the zeroth element, > but that the second element is the first makes my head explode...
zeroth oneth twoth ;-) (element no. one is a better way of pronouncing it.) > > >> Also, it has the nice property that, for an infinite sequence, every >> integer makes sense as an index (in Python). > > Er, what's the -1th element of an infinite sequence? well, it's the first from the other end. The infinite bit is in between, thank you very much. ;-) -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list