On Sat, Aug 7, 2010 at 1:14 PM, John Nagle <na...@animats.com> wrote: > FORTRAN, MATLAB, and Octave all use 1-based subscripts. > > The languages which have real multidimensional arrays, rather > than arrays of arrays, tend to use 1-based subscripts. That > reflects standard practice in mathematics.
I propose that this has less to do with the fact that those languages have "real" multidimensional arrays, and more to do with the fact that those languages are designed for doing mathematics. C, Oberon, and others also have "real" multidimensional arrays, and use 0-based subscripts. Standard practice in mathematics is not necessarily best practice in programming. Cheers, Ian -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list