2 ms·

I agree with you, but it doesn't sound like it would have helped things in this domain, as a negative index into a string (if they used signed ints and subtract

I agree with you, but it doesn't sound like it would have helped things in this domain, as a negative index into a string (if they used signed ints and subtracted larger values) would have produced (according to the spec, undefined) values that were likely just as wrong.

lostmyoldone 8y ago
There was a check for a negative difference before the array access, so signed arithmetic would have hit that check. Well, at least for any reasonable definition of signed arithmetic.