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- $\begingroup$ Pascal and Visual Basic (and many other Basics) also preferred natural indices. Using zero-based indexing really has to do with conflating indexing and pointer arithmetic. If I want an array from -10 to 10, why should I index it from 0, right? Let the compiler/library deal with the details. C didn't have indexing at all, only pointer arithmetic, so there was little choice. For some weird reason, even today people still count this as C's advantage, rather than misfeature. Oh well. $\endgroup$Luaan– Luaan2018-09-13 10:49:20 +00:00Commented Sep 13, 2018 at 10:49
- $\begingroup$ I considered including Basic but it was so long since I have used it that I was not sure. Also, as you hint, it is probably dialect dependent. I miss the ability to choose the minimum and maximum index. It is a shame that it has not caught on. $\endgroup$badjohn– badjohn2018-09-13 11:39:09 +00:00Commented Sep 13, 2018 at 11:39
- $\begingroup$ Plenty of languages on the "abstraction makes things easier" side of the barrier still support ranges. You just need to give up C-like languages, for the most part (though e.g. C# does have support for arbitrary indexing, it's not really "equal citizen" compared to zero-based). $\endgroup$Luaan– Luaan2018-09-13 17:05:01 +00:00Commented Sep 13, 2018 at 17:05
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