Subject: Re: No array update w/o setf?
From: rpw3@rpw3.org (Rob Warnock)
Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2006 03:41:00 -0500
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <hOSdnfP6MMMB7VHZnZ2dnUVZ_rCdnZ2d@speakeasy.net>
Ken Tilton  <kentilton@gmail.com> wrote:
+---------------
| > I'm starting index values from 1 instead of 0.
|
| Because your array goes to eleven? I think this is The Real Problem.    
| Why on earth do you want an array starting at one? I ask because I 
| think The Great Contribution to society of computer science is the 
| news that zero should have been the first natural number.
+---------------
 
Indeed:
    
    "Why numbering should start at zero"
    Edsger W. Dijkstra
    11 August 1982
    http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/ewd08xx/EWD831.PDF
    http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EWD831.html

Common Lisp's pervasive convention on :START as an inclusive
bound and :END as an *exclusive* bound agrees with Dijkstra's
preferred "convention a)".


-Rob

-----
Rob Warnock			<rpw3@rpw3.org>
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