From: Robert Klemme <bob.news@...>
Date: 2003-11-17T18:07:23+09:00
Subject: [OT] Re: substring: to the end of the string


"Linus Sellberg" <linse428@student.liu.se> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:bp53n1$4o7$1@news.island.liu.se...
> Gavin Sinclair wrote:
> > On Saturday, November 15, 2003, 2:48:53 AM, KONTRA wrote:
> > Seriously, the ability to negative-index strings and arrays like that
> > is a breath of fresh air compared to traditional compiled languages.
> > I see no need to improve on it.
>
> I do, but I have no good solution to the problem.
>
> The problem being that positive indexes go from 0 to n-1, while negative
> go from -1 to -n, which could introduce confusion.
>
> But as I said, I know of no good solutions, since -0 is not a good way,

This reminds me of an old mathematician's joke: there was this professor
for math that found an epsilon so small, that half of it was already
negative...  ;-)

> and making the first positive index a 1 is just as bad, for several
reasons.

Yup

    robert