422
counting (lemmy.world)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] sirico@feddit.uk 1 points 2 years ago

Haaaaaang on is that why we start on 0...

[-] DmMacniel@feddit.de 5 points 2 years ago

No. We count start at zero because the array already starts with an element of a specific size. Starting at 1 would always skip that initial element.

[-] CanadaPlus@futurology.today 8 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

You could have "empty arrays" in a language if you wanted. The real reason is that you start with an offset of zero as you read an array from memory at hardware level, and so this way address is just "start address + element size * element number".

[-] BorgDrone@lemmy.one 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

No, we start counting at one. We start indexing at zero.

An array with one element has an element count of 1, and that element would be at index 0.

[-] LaggyKar@programming.dev 3 points 2 years ago

This is how we end up with off-by-one errors

[-] LazaroFilm@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago

Because if you convert it back to binary, you have 0x0000 and that is one extra bit you can use instead of limiting your available values.

this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
422 points (94.0% liked)

Programmer Humor

37457 readers
11 users here now

Post funny things about programming here! (Or just rant about your favourite programming language.)

Rules:

founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS