Subject: Re: One-based indexes in XPath
From: "Andrew Welch" <andrew.j.welch@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 20 May 2008 19:52:41 +0100
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2008/5/20 Colin Adams <colinpauladams@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
>> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
>> 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
>> 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
>>
>> Now ask the kids what is more difficult to learn, English or Arithmetic?
>> (when the decade changes on the same row).
>
> The decade does not change on the same row.
> Each row is a single decade.
Isn't the point that the "twenties" start on the row above the rest;
each row spans 2 decades (the "nineties" started when 1989 became
1990, not 91)
The ultimate example of zero/one based confusion is in Java when
creating a date - days are 1 based, but months are zero based, so
new GregorianCalendar(2008, 5, 20)
returns the 20th of April. (to avoid confusion you need to use the
enum Calendar.MAY)
I think it was genuine mistake rather than intentional, but you can
imagine the bugs that has caused. I doubt many bugs have come from
XPath's 1 based index.
--
Andrew Welch
http://andrewjwelch.com
Kernow: http://kernowforsaxon.sf.net/
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