Re: [PATCH] Exorcise "zero-dimensional" arrays (Was: Re: Should array_length() Return NULL)

On 04/04/13 04:58, Pavel Stehule wrote:
>
>
>
> 2013/4/3 Gavin Flower <GavinFlower(at)archidevsys(dot)co(dot)nz
> <mailto:GavinFlower(at)archidevsys(dot)co(dot)nz>>
>
> On 04/04/13 03:02, Florian Pflug wrote:
>
> On Apr3, 2013, at 15:30 , Andrew Dunstan <andrew(at)dunslane(dot)net
> <mailto:andrew(at)dunslane(dot)net>> wrote:
>
> On 04/02/2013 02:46 PM, Florian Pflug wrote:
>
> If we're going to break compatibility, we should IMHO
> get rid of
> non-zero lower bounds all together. My guess is that
> the number of
> affected users wouldn't be much higher than for the
> proposed patch,
> and it'd allow lossless mapping to most language's
> native array types...
>
> That would actually break a HUGE number of users, since
> the default lower
> bound is 1. I have seen any number of pieces if code that
> rely on that.
>
> Uh, yeah, we should make it 1 then, not 0, then. As long as
> the bound
> is fixed, conversion to native C/Java/Ruby/Python/... arrays
> would still
> be lossless.
>
> best regards,
> Florian Pflug
>
>
> Zero as the default lower bound is consistent with most languages
> (especially the common ones like C, C++, Java, & Python), in fact
> I don't remember any language where that is not the case (ignoring
> SQL) - and I've written programs in about 20 languages.
>
>
> pascal, ADA, and ALGOL like languages
>
> Regards
>
> Pavel
>
ALOGOL 60 was zero based by default, as I remember deliberately setting
the lower bound to 1, I managed to avoid PASCAL and I only glanced at ADA.

Cheers,
Gavin