Another option for users is to "sacrifice" the 0th entry of an array. Depending on the size(as in sizeof) of the entry, it can be worth it. A benefit is that y

Another option for users is to "sacrifice" the 0th entry of an array. Depending on the size(as in sizeof) of the entry, it can be worth it. A benefit is that you can then use 0 as a sentinel value; for instance if you have a find() routine that surely can fail, it can just return 0 instead of having e.g. -1 (which can introduce minor issues). In my experience, though, I am so used to 0-based index that switching schemes can cause stupid off-by-one bugs. I guess that's the main reason behind complains about Lua. It's not that "natural" arrays are thought of as bad, but mixing both schemes (often C an Lua) is error-prone.