Associative arrays are also "nicer" with 1 based indexing t={} t[#t+1] --> t[1] DONE! t[#t==0 and 0 or #t+1] Now, in order to fix this (or achieve the s

Associative arrays are also "nicer" with 1 based indexing t={} t[#t+1] --> t[1] DONE! t[#t==0 and 0 or #t+1] Now, in order to fix this (or achieve the same behavior as #t+1), the length operator must return -1, which would be ridiculous. its empty, and we have a perfect representation of emptiness in math "0". This is also true in awk as well, nobody ever whines about awk "arrays" being 0