[OT] I Can't Go Trick or Treating Anymore

[Roger Oberholtzer]

On Fri, 2004-10-29 at 14:00, David Bandel wrote:
> On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 10:56:21 +0200, Roger Oberholtzer <roger at opq.se> wrote:
> > On Fri, 2004-10-29 at 10:17, Michael Scottaline wrote:
> > > On Thu, 28 Oct 2004 23:20:51 -0500, Bill Davidson <harley7 at cogeco.ca> wrote:
> > > > On 19:49 Thu 28 Oct     , Kurt Wall wrote:
> > > > > Top 10 Signs You're Too Old to Trick or Treat
> > > > >
> > > > > 9. You get winded from knocking on the door.
> > > > > 8. You forget why you are knocking on the door.
> > > > > 7. You ask for high fiber candy only.
> > > > > 6. You have to have another kid chew the candy for you.
> > > > > 5. When someone drops a candy in your bag you lose your balance.
> > > > > 4. People say, "Great Boris Karloff mask" and you're not wearing a mask.
> > > > > 3. By the end of the night you have a bag full of restraining orders.
> > > > > 2. You have to carefully choose a costume that won't dislodge your
> > > > >    hairpiece.
> > > > > 1. You're the only Power Ranger with a walker.
> > > > > 0. You keep having to go home to pee.
> > > >
> > > > Leave it to a geek to make that list zero based;)
> > > ===================================
> > > Nah, a geek woulda done it in binary ;o)
> > 
> > A 'real' geek would argue (and by even understanding that there is
> > something to argue seals the geek label) that only those with a hardware
> > bent start a list at 0 (C programmers aside). 0 means 'no list exists'.
> 
> I hate to tell you this, but Perl also starts all list/array arguments
> at zero (and so by habit, do I).  The null (it's a zero as well, but
> not an ascii 0) indicates no list.

Never did like Perl :) When it comes to script languages, I'm a Tcl'er,
meaning that indexes are what ever I want them to be. When it comes to
compiled ones, I use C. In C, of course, things start at 0 (sort of).
IIRC, Pascal got it 'right'. For strings, doesn't index 0 contain the
string's length. not the first character? Thai is in [1].

So, there is no one common system. But I do have a single preference.
And have maintained it for over 25 years of programming.



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