Re: One-based indexes in XPath

2008/5/20 Justin Johansson <procode@xxxxxxxxxxx>:
> In response to my question, thanks Colin for being the first devil's
> advocate for 1-based indexes.

I'm not a devil's advocate. 1-based indexing is the only correct
approach to software engineering.

> Possibly I am wrong about 0 being the norm.  Please enlighten me.  I was
> only going on ubiqitous languages like C++, C#, Java & Javascript.

They aren't modern though.

> Would you also please justify your claim " It is a very poor choice".

0-based indexing is a frequent source of bugs, due to the mismatch in
language that now enters the mental thought process.

The first element is numbered 0. It should be numbered 1, because that
is the meaning of 1 in an ordinal context - the first item, not the
second.

> Sure we can skip the first memory cell in $0.02 per meg RAM; but why is 0
> poor wrt 1?  What's wrong with -1 then?

Even worse. Now 1 would refer to the third element.

It''s just obscurantism - a hangover from assembler-programming days.