Re: STRING starts at 1: why?

[pattis@beaver.cs.washington.edu (Richard Pattis)]

I actually once had a list of reasons to start arrays at 0 vs 1, which I've
conveniently lost. In the spirit of starting a new one, I'll try to recall what
I can from the old list. An array that is a STRING probably has other special
properties.


Start at 1:
  'LENGTH is same as 'LAST
  Negated indexes are unique (I used this fact once in a program)

Start at 0:
  Mod works better (for hashing)
  Convient when doing work with 'polynomial-like' things


Rich
  
-- 
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  Richard E. Pattis                     "Programming languages are like
  Department of Computer Science         pizzas - they come in only "too"
    and Engineering                      sizes: too big and too small."