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0 pointsrbehrends10y ago0 comments

Well, Julia is a language designed for mathematics, where indices starting at 1 is common (vectors, matrices). You can argue that polynomials have exponents starting at zero, but then you quickly get to Laurent polynomials, and what you really should be arguing is that the lower bound should be configurable, rather than being set at one specific value (which, of course, is still possible with custom types).

Second, I don't find Guido's argument convincing. Yes, half-open ranges can be mathematically more elegant (and that's actually Dijkstra's argument), but that doesn't mean that the code necessarily becomes more readable. For example, to construct an array without the element at index i, you'd do the following with Python-style indexing:

  a[0:i] + a[i+1:n]

and the following with closed intervals and indexing starting at 1:

  a[1:i-1] + a[i+1:n]

While there is an element of subjectivity to it, I at least find the latter option more readable (possibly because of habituation to mathematical notation).

While the notation for the specific example of i:i+k-1 might be less elegant with closed ranges, closed ranges are something that you find in every math textbook, because sums, products, unions, intersections from a to b (and other operators in that style) operate on closed ranges normally. Closed ranges are the norm in conventional mathematical notation and it makes sense to pick the option that minimizes the overhead when transcribing between mathematical texts and code.

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blt10y ago

Here are some tasks that are ugly with [1:n] indexing:

    - the 1D index of element (i,j) in a matrix is i+(j-1)*m instead of i+j*m

    - the i'th 3-element subvector of a vector is v[3*(i-1)+1:3*i] 
      instead of v[3*i:3*(i+1)]

    - if you have vector of indices that partitions an vector into chunks,
      the i'th chunk is v[ind[i]:ind[i+1]-1] instead of v[ind[i]:ind[i+1]]

Perhaps small issues, but these are all real examples from my most recent Matlab project that were annoying.

But maybe, like the static typing issue, my opinion on this topic is distorted because I spent a lot of time programming in C++ and comparatively little time reading math papers.

Or maybe it would be equally easy to make a list of tasks that are ugly with [0:n) indexing.

jasode10y ago

>I really, really wish they had dropped the 1-based indexing
>, my opinion on this topic is distorted because I spent a lot of time programming in C++

Mathematics-related programming[1] in MATLAB, R Language, Mathematica, SAS, etc all use 1-based indexing. Given that the originators of Julia are MATLAB users, it makes sense that they made a deliberate choice to keep 1-based indexing.

In other words, it was more important to grab mindshare from those previous math tools rather than appeal to C/C++/Java/etc programmers.

One outlier in the landscape of numerical programming is Python+NumPy/SciPy in the sense that it uses 0-based indices. While Julia also wants to be attractive to Python programmers, it still seems like the bigger motivation was programmers of MATLAB and other math software.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02U9AJMEWx0&feature=youtu.be...

Fomite10y ago

This, pretty much. Not to mention that, beyond languages, data is often 1-based indexed. I have never gotten a patient data set with ID=0 as the first entry. In my mind, compatibility with what users are expecting, and trying not to induce indexing errors, trumps most other concerns.

jasode10y ago

>, beyond languages, data is often 1-based indexed.

That's a good point. Probably the most widespread data example for non-programmers is spreadsheets (MS Excel, Google Sheets). The first row[1] in the spreadsheet is labeled as "1" instead of "0". The idiomatic Visual Basic programming code to loop through the rows would look something like:

  For Each cell In Range("a1:a25")  ' not "a0:a24"
      ' do work
  Next cell

[1]https://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft+excel+spreadsheet+...

cohomologo10y ago

Mathematica is actually 0-based - but with the zero index spot reserved. A list {1, 2, 3}=List[1, 2, 3] could be read as (List 1 2 3) in Lisp style; one can check if you have Mathematica that {1, 2, 3}[[0]] = List.

But I think that's neither here nor there. Whenever the index has more use than as a label, mathematics starts at zero. Modular arithmetic, polynomials, discrete fourier transformations - for that matter, any discrete approximation of continuous math - all naturally start at zero, and generate lots of -1s in one-based indexing.

jasode10y ago

In this subthread, the phrase "0-based / 1-based" is for the word "base" accessing the first element which is semantically equivalent to x[0] in C/C++/Python/etc or x[1] in R Language. Yes in Mathematica, putting "0" between "[" "]" will get you the reserved "head" but that's not how people are talking about "0-based" here.

rbehrendsOP10y ago

You will find problematic examples no matter which option you choose (which is why I personally favor being able to set the lower bound freely).

With half-open ranges, for example, you will need different code to address a segment and the last element of a segment. E.g. if you have some structure with start_of(i) and end_of(i) expressions, then you can do a[start_of(i):end_of(i)] with closed indexing and a[end_of(i)] to access the last element, while with open intervals, you have to break the abstraction and use a[end_of(i)-1].

You can also iterate over start_of(i) .. end_of(i) in a for loop naturally if ranges are closed. (See how Python's iteration is defined in terms of half-open ranges and how iterating over closed ranges – which happens often enough when the values aren't indices – is a bit of a pain in Python.)

ihnorton10y ago

See https://github.com/eschnett/FlexibleArrays.jl

(somewhat in jest, there's also https://github.com/simonster/TwoBasedIndexing.jl)

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

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blt10y ago

Here are some tasks that are ugly with [1:n] indexing:

    - the 1D index of element (i,j) in a matrix is i+(j-1)*m instead of i+j*m

    - the i'th 3-element subvector of a vector is v[3*(i-1)+1:3*i] 
      instead of v[3*i:3*(i+1)]

    - if you have vector of indices that partitions an vector into chunks,
      the i'th chunk is v[ind[i]:ind[i+1]-1] instead of v[ind[i]:ind[i+1]]

Perhaps small issues, but these are all real examples from my most recent Matlab project that were annoying.

But maybe, like the static typing issue, my opinion on this topic is distorted because I spent a lot of time programming in C++ and comparatively little time reading math papers.

Or maybe it would be equally easy to make a list of tasks that are ugly with [0:n) indexing.

jasode10y ago

>I really, really wish they had dropped the 1-based indexing
>, my opinion on this topic is distorted because I spent a lot of time programming in C++

In other words, it was more important to grab mindshare from those previous math tools rather than appeal to C/C++/Java/etc programmers.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02U9AJMEWx0&feature=youtu.be...

Fomite10y ago

jasode10y ago

>, beyond languages, data is often 1-based indexed.

  For Each cell In Range("a1:a25")  ' not "a0:a24"
      ' do work
  Next cell

[1]https://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft+excel+spreadsheet+...

cohomologo10y ago

jasode10y ago

rbehrendsOP10y ago

You will find problematic examples no matter which option you choose (which is why I personally favor being able to set the lower bound freely).

ihnorton10y ago

See https://github.com/eschnett/FlexibleArrays.jl

(somewhat in jest, there's also https://github.com/simonster/TwoBasedIndexing.jl)

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse