On 2016/10/08 9:41 PM, Jens Alfke wrote:
—Jens
* is it ‘indexes’ or ‘indices’, in computer science?
It is both, and I pedantically prefer "Indices", but there's been some
debate and you can find on-line literature in support of all views.
The correct original "English" is of course "Indices" in the same way
that other Latin-origin words ending in "x" such as "Vertex" and
"Matrix" plurals to "Vertices" and "Matrices". So it is correct to say
"Indices", also noting that in normal English the word "Indexes" is a
present tense verb - as in: "Mary indexes her cook books" (alternate to
the pres-cont. "is indexing"), or: "the DB engine Indexes the table".
Funnily, the one usually preferred in technical literature is "Indices",
but...
In computer terms it has become acceptable and even sometimes preferable
to use the word "Indexes" to describe the plural of a database Index.
The reason seems two-fold in that computer programming languages (while
based in English words mostly) are really World-wide used, not just by
English speaking patrons for whom "indices" would make sense - most
everybody else in the World (including North America) seems to more
easily understand "Indexes" as the plural - and it further serves to
distinguish between the plethora of indices out there, and specifically
Database Indexes, which are much more than just a list of page numbers.
This has permeated the language world to the point you almost always
find both "Indices" and "Indexes" in dictionaries now given as plural
for Index.
Language rules are never quite strict rules... it's just a description
and rule-based understanding of how people speak, and if that changes
over time, so must the rules that describe it.
I cringe to think it, but probably some day these sentence parts would
be found in an actual dictionary:
"And I was like, r u serius? And she wuz all like - whaeva!, l8er m8."
Fun. :)
Ryan
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