From: "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <znmeb@...>
Date: 2007-07-18T12:33:41+09:00
Subject: Re: The Pebble in the Ruby Shoe

brabuhr@gmail.com wrote:
> I never used ALGOL, but:
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALGOL_58
> Both IAL and ALGOL 60 allowed arrays with arbitrary lower and upper
> subscript bounds, and allowed subscript bounds to be defined by
> integer expressions.

I wonder how C got saddled with a fixed lower limit of 0 then. It must
have been a simplification somewhere in the chain from Algol - CPL -
BCPL - B - C.

> http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~mpw7t/cs655/pos2.html
> ALGOL 68 was designed to be an improvement upon ALGOL 60. In ALGOL 60,
> arrays could be multi-dimensional, they could be dynamically sized,
> and their lower bound index could be non-zero [1].

Algol 68 was a truly marvelous language that somehow never caught on.