Quoting Andy Dirnberger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
As far as i goes, I've always assumed it was just shorthand for something like index or increment. Nested for loops are often then controlled with j and then k. You can use these with confidence that people will understand the meaning. But if you feel more comfortable using a variable called $counter than one called $i, by all means do so. There are plenty of people out there who refuse to use i.
The use of variable names like $i, $j, $k, etc for counters is a hold over from early Fortran which declared that only variables starting with certain letters could be integers. The first letter was "i". I seem to remember that only the letters i, j, l, l, m, n were used for integer variables, so the use quickly became a "standard" and it's been carried over into other languages through the use of examples written by old time programmers.
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