From: Colin Bartlett <colinb2r@...>
Date: 2010-08-24T20:18:47+09:00
Subject: Re: assert "foo"[3] != "foo"[3,1]...revisited

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Correcting my own post to remove confusion between length as in array.size
and length as in slice(index, length)

Element Reference=97Returns the element at index, or returns a subarray
starting at start and continuing for length elements, or returns a subarray
specified by range. Negative indices count backward from the end of the
array (-1 is the last element).
/*new line to highlight that an out of range index might not return nil*/
Returns nil if the start (or starting index) are out of range:
/* suggested additional documentation */
/*new line*/ *unless* there is a length *and* Integer(start) =3D=3D array.s=
ize;
/*new line*/ *or* the argument is a range *and* Integer(range.begin) =3D=3D
array.size.
/*new line*/ For these special cases (see the table of examples) the return
value is an empty array [].
/*new line*/ The reason for this special behaviour is that when the start i=
s
within the array the sought length is rounded /* or use "truncated"? */ to
fit in the size. In the special cases examples 5 (which is the size of the
array) is considered as touching the end of the array, so the returned valu=
e
is a subarray with size zero.

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