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I figured that someone would pipe up about the 19th byte vs 19th index, and I'm glad. This is just semantics, but does index 0 represent the first byte or the

I figured that someone would pipe up about the 19th byte vs 19th index, and I'm glad. This is just semantics, but does index 0 represent the first byte or the zeroth byte? I completely agree regarding memory access, but would argue that strings and memory should not be treated in the same way. Having the index represent the length - 1 has caused countless off-by-one bugs [1] that would not have been there in the first place if string indexes started with 1. Java, JavaScript, Python, (maybe Ruby, I'm not fluent there) also bite the user if you attempt index data outside of the string's range. C will happily index whatever you want, and these bugs can often remain hidden for decades. 1. https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/193.html https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/193.html

Joker_vD 5y ago
Index N represents "skip N elements". That gives you very easy additive/subtractive behaviour, unlike "how many numbers are there from 7 to 17?" scenarios. Sure, 17-7 gives you 10, but that's not the final answer, you have to add 1 to get the right answer, 11. Sorry, no, you actually subtract 1 and the right answer is 9. Wait, no: 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, okay, 11 in total, so you have to add 1, got it right the first time.