Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!cbmvax!amix!skrenta
From: skrenta@amix.commodore.com (Rich Skrenta)
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers
Subject: Re: Shoulds arrays start at zero or one?
Message-ID: <289@amix.commodore.com>
Date: 17 Jan 90 18:56:12 GMT
References: <684@cditi.UUCP>
Distribution: na
Organization: Commodore Amix Development
Lines: 24

In article <684@cditi.UUCP> josh@cditi.UUCP (Josh Muskovitz) writes:

> Obviously, none of the "arrays should begin with 1" people have ever done ANY
> serious assembly programming for any processor.

Why should all the constraints of assembly programming be forced on me when
I use a high level language?  If I'm using one it's so I can get *away* from
assembly and have the compiler take care of some of the details for me.

> Now, even if you find that difficult to believe, what about that wasted
> element you get when the compiler (shudder) forces element 0?

I can't imagine any compiler forcing an element.  Only Pascal programmers do
that when they switch to C  :-)

Why won't this work:

	b	data	100			# storage for array
	b_base	equ	1			# starting index of array
	b_addr	equ	b - b_base		# base address for array

Where's the inefficiency?  What will go wrong with my pointer arithmetic?

Rich