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From: "Nick Roberts" <nickroberts@adaos.worldonline.co.uk>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Naturals and discrete types
Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2001 18:01:18 -0000
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> "Preben Randhol" <randhol+abuse@pvv.org> wrote in message
> news:slrn9u5sp5.v0j.randhol+abuse@kiuk0156.chembio.ntnu.no...
> > >
> > > Natural is a subtype of Integer with a range of 0 to Integer'last.
> >
> > Which again comes from basic mathematics. :-)

"Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org> wrote in
message news:9rupv9$o5h$1@nh.pace.co.uk...
> Except that when I was in gradeschool and "The New Math" was popular, they
> called those "Whole" numbers with "Natural" numbers being from 1..Infinity
> (Or Integer'Last, if you just want to get the job done...)
>
> When did Natural numbers start including zero? Was I cutting class that
day?

I have it on fairly good authority (a leader in finite mathematics research)
that, as far as mathematicians are concerned, the set of natural numbers
(denoted by a funny N), constitutes the integers from 1 upwards (to what
they call Aleph 0, because they just have to have a fancy name for infinity
;-) They use a funny Z with a plus and 0 for what Ada calls Natural.

Which just goes to show that we're better off not taking too much notice of
mathematicians anyway. They'd say Ada has "too much notation."

:-)


--
Nick Roberts