Natural numbers

I think You have gone to far. ;) It is not my opinion - natural numbers are with us from very past (fact is that there was not number 1 in those numbers in greek mathematic). When You say that natural numbers starts with 0 because one man (i agree - great) in XX century made axioms about it - it sounds like "there was no world before 1796". When is 0 or not in natural numbers, is matter of context. regards Aleksander K. [alekk--obywatel--pl]

Just a few quick comments about indexing of arrays (or REBOL blocks). 1) Some of the recent posts seem to imply there is some intrinsic mathematical reason which justifies zero-based indexing. These posts seem to ignore the fact that in the areas of mathematics where arrays, vectors, matrices, tensors, etc. are widely used, it is almost universal to use one-based offsets (check any book on linear algebra). So that, e.g., a[1] is notation for the first element of a vector, a[1,1] is the first element in the first row of a matrix, etc. So for the purpose of indexing arrays, mathematicians have always used one-based indexing. 2) In my own view, the whole issue of index base is fairly minor, you can do it either way. However as a person who has implemented many array-based mathematics packages in C, I have found the zero-based indexing of C to be more often a hindrance than a help. There are, however, good reasons for zero-base offsets when doing system programming that involves things like pointer arithmetic. After all, C was designed for low-level systems programming, not for doing mathematics. FORTRAN, on the other hand, was designed to do scientific numerical computing on arrays and vectors, so the choice of one-based array indexing was the natural one. 3) There is a thoughtful discussion of the subject in "Numerical Recipes in C" by Press, et al. Second Edition 1992. It is in Chapter 1 Section 2 under the heading Vectors and One-Dimensional Arrays p. 18. I would recommend a careful reading this topic. In all of their C code for matrix/vector operations they use one-based indexing (having shown a clever way to achieve this in C). Here are a few quotes from their discussion (forgive my typos): It is sometimes convenient to use zero-offset vectors, and sometimes convenient to use unit-offset vectors. ... a vector of data points calls for a unit-offset. But suppose that your vector of length 7, now call it a, is perversely a native C, zero-offset array (has range a[0..6]). Perhaps, this is the case because you disagree with our aesthetic prejudices, Heaven help you! We want to free you from the zero-offset thinking that C encourages but (as we see) does not require. Cheers -Larry

XIX, actually. (The axioms date from 1891. ;-)

As you correctly point out, the ancient Greeks didn't even consider 1 as a "number". Many of them also believed that the world was flat, that the sun rode on a chariot, and that air, earth, fire, and water were the basic physical elements. It hardly seems fair to restrict our science or mathematics to what they understood... :-} Perhaps I didn't express my point sufficiently clearly (if so I apologize): "natural number" is a mathematical concept, and the standard model in mathematics is Peano's axioms. In the same sense as the statement: "quark" is a physical concept, and the standard model in physics (quantumelectrodynamics IIRC) uses that concept. In neither case do we limit ourselves to the boundaries of knowledge of the past. -jn- ------------------------------------------------------------ Programming languages: compact, powerful, simple ... Pick any two! joel'dot'neely'at'fedex'dot'com

A *completely* off-topic note: I think it's quantum cromodynamics (QCD) you're after :) -- Johan Forsberg

There are intrinsic mathematical and performance reasons which justify zero-based indexing for many non-numerical (e.g. combinatorial and statistical) applications.

I don't ignore those; it's simply that if one has zero-based indexing, one always has the option of ignoring position 0 and treating the remainder as 1-origin if the logic of the algorithm inherently calls for a 1-based view. In contrast, if one only has 1-origin indexing, there is no way to achieve a similar conversion to 0-based design. One is forced to do surplus index manipulation.

Provided one's language ALLOWS one to do it either way...

As stated above, and illustrated (at least I intended so) by many examples I've used previously in this thread, there are also good reasons for 0-based indexing when doing other kinds of algorithms as well. This is not merely a "systems" programming vs. "applications" programming issue.

They are entitled to their own views. However, as someone who has implemented lots of different classes of applications (including language translation/interpretation, payroll, data conversion, mailing list management, inventory management, barcode decoding and printing, sales and commissions accounting, artificial intelligence, neural networks, numerical analysis, systems utilities, device drivers, text processing for pre-press formatting, web application development, statistical processing and reporting, education management, grades processing and reporting, student records, manufacturing accounting and production planning, and document management) in lots of different languages (including Algol, FORTRAN, COBOL, RPG, several dialects of Basic, various assemblers, NewtonScript, LISP, TLWMNBN, Perl, SNOBOL, xBase, Java, a few incarnations of FORTH, and last -- but certainly not least -- REBOL), I can only say that I've experienced far fewer difficulties caused by 0-based indexing than by 1-based indexing.

I wish I could free us from the 1-origin thinking that REBOL both encourages and requires. (However, I see another windmill that needs tilting... ;-) -jn- ------------------------------------------------------------ Programming languages: compact, powerful, simple ... Pick any two! joel'dot'neely'at'fedex'dot'com

[...] But there are two shools - first - as You said second - that natural numbers starts from 1... THEN ANSWER IS: 0 AND 1 are good (from that point of view) greets Aleksander K. [alekk--obywatel--pl]

I'm sorry, but this is neither a matter of opinion nor of popular vote. The standard model in Mathematics is known as "Peano's Postulates" or "Peano's Axioms", after Giuseppe Peano (1858-1932), the brilliant Italian mathematician and logician. The full set of axioms states: - 0 is a natural number. - The (unique) successor of any natural number is a natural number. - No two numbers have the same successor. - 0 is not the successor of any number. - If P is a property over the natural numbers such that - P(0) is true, and - P(n+1) is true whenever P(n) is true then P is true for all natural numbers. The last of these, of course, is the principle of mathematical induction, which has direct application to programming. Suppose I have some expressions in the following schema ; point 0 while [loop-cond] [ ; point n loop-action ; point n+1 ] ; point z Now, suppose there is some property (of my computation) that holds at "point 0", and is preserved by LOOP-ACTION -- i.e., if it is true at "point n" then it will still be true at point n+1 . Then, by mathematical induction, I can conclude that at "point z" I will know that the property still holds true, and that LOOP-COND is false. The induction, of course, is over the number of times LOOP-ACTION has been evaluated, and that count is 0 prior to any evaluations of the loop. (Corresponding reasoning holds for schemata using other loop control functions as well.) Recognizing 0 as the origin of the natural numbers is both explicit in Peano's Axioms, and too fundamentally useful to give up. We learned long ago (from negative experience with FORTRAN, actually ;-) that requiring a minimum loop count of one instead of zero is often entirely too awkward. ...feeling too loopy to continue ... ;-) -jn- ------------------------------------------------------------ Programming languages: compact, powerful, simple ... Pick any two! joel'dot'neely'at'fedex'dot'com