Re: 1-based indexing in Lua or the one without zero

[Francisco Olarte <folarte@...>]

On Mon, Apr 23, 2018 at 6:58 PM, Axel Kittenberger <axkibe@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Related, about point three. When pacing (aloud) a distance I normally
>> see people step at the star and count "one, two, three...", no "start"
>> or "zero" "one, two, three", but that may be a local custom.
>
> If you want to index the positions, where you started, would that be "one
> step" or "zero steps"?

I'm not discussing indexing. I'm discussing how I pace a distance ( or
see people pace it ).

> I don't get it, why everybody is always talking about "counting". Again and
> again.

Maybe my choice of words was bad, I meant "stand still at the start
and say one, two, three as I walked.". I was trying to know it people
did it in a different way where the OP lived.

> Nobody is actually ever counting anything, especially data.

I count data every day. Just finished a program which reads a list of
calls and counts the ones which pass a condition. WITHOUT indexing
them ( it's a text file, a kind of list, I can easily traverse it and
count things, but not index it ).

> Even the
> computer isn't exactly "counting" if you query #array (dunno what the
> current implementation is,

That's a totally different thing. I do not count when I query #a in
lua, and I assume the implementation does not do it either.

> is it still look at the array part counter and
> then do a divide by half search on the hash part to find an "edge"?).
> Anyway, what's happening all the time is indexing and indexing only. There
> is no "counting" only addressing/indexing.

Well, but I was not discussing "how to get #a in lua", I was talking
about pacing a distance, to start, I do not need a computer for that.


> What index the first (yes first
> item) should have, is the question. Does it have index 1 or index 0? I still
> wonder how the "it's all about counting cows and steps" people can leave
> with the fact the first year of a decade has a 0. That's so unnatural! After
> 1999 should come 2111, would be much more natural.

That depends on your definition of decade. There is not a standard
one, and working in telephony I'm used to define decades as 0-9 so all
the numbers in a decade have a common prefix. But telephone numbers
are not normal numbers, leading zeros count, they are more like
restricted-alphabet strings.

.....

> On Mon, Apr 23, 2018 at 6:36 PM, Francisco Olarte <folarte@peoplecall.com>
> wrote:

Oh! The old top-posting/bottom-quoting/partial copying stuff to
heavily mislead in the context! I saw what you did there!

Francisco Olarte.