From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Path: eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!maths.tcd.ie!newsswitch.lcs.mit.edu!nntp.TheWorld.com!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Robert A Duff Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: What is the history behind Natural'First = 0 ? Date: Fri, 01 May 2020 17:36:40 -0400 Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA Message-ID: References: <9f0215ca-2760-47cf-a7cb-50184892e1d0@googlegroups.com> <874ksz4gwd.fsf@nosuchdomain.example.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: shell02.theworld.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Trace: pcls7.std.com 1588368999 1450 192.74.137.72 (1 May 2020 21:36:39 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@TheWorld.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 1 May 2020 21:36:39 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.3 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:xk83chGNlbZpwtmmmmkHD9rxZic= Xref: reader01.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:58548 Date: 2020-05-01T17:36:40-04:00 List-Id: Keith Thompson writes: > Wikipedia says that some definitions have "natural numbers" starting > with 0, and others have them starting with 1 -- and the term "whole > numbers" is sometimes used to refer to the set of all integers. "The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from." I seem to recall an early version of Ada (or Green) that said "subtype Natural is Integer range 1..Integer'Last;". I could be misremembering that, and (if true) I don't remember what the 0..Integer'Last one was called. Speaking of zero: Q: What caused the fall of the Roman Empire? A: They didn't know about zero, so they had no way to terminate the strings in their C programs. Har, har. - Bob