Re: One-based indexes in XPath

2008/5/20 Colin Adams <colinpauladams@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
>>   1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9 10
>>   11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
>>   21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
>>
>>  Now ask the kids what is more difficult to learn, English or Arithmetic?
>>  (when the decade changes on the same row).
>
> The decade does not change on the same row.
> Each row is a single decade.

Isn't the point that the "twenties" start on the row above the rest;
each row spans 2 decades (the "nineties" started when 1989 became
1990, not 91)

The ultimate example of zero/one based confusion is in Java when
creating a date - days are 1 based, but months are zero based, so

new GregorianCalendar(2008, 5, 20)

returns the 20th of April.  (to avoid confusion you need to use the
enum Calendar.MAY)

I think it was genuine mistake rather than intentional, but you can
imagine the bugs that has caused.  I doubt many bugs have come from
XPath's 1 based index.


-- 
Andrew Welch
http://andrewjwelch.com
Kernow: http://kernowforsaxon.sf.net/