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From: naz@hslrswi.hasler.ascom.ch (Norman H. Azadian)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.icon
Subject: string indexing peculiarity
Keywords: string indexing
Message-ID: <1871@hslrswi.hasler.ascom.ch>
Date: 26 Feb 91 08:26:10 GMT
Organization: Hasler AG
Lines: 24

Recently I found out the hard way about something I consider to be
an anomaly in string indexing.  I consider it an anomaly  because
it was, at least for me, totally unexpected.  To wit:

	s := "-D"
	x := (s[3:0] | "default")

"Obviously" accessing the 3rd character in a 2-character string
should fail and x would get the string "default".  It turns out,
non-intuitively enough, that I get an empty string, exactly as
if I had tried s[1:1].

Thinking about it, I have to admit that it makes a certain amount
of sense.  In fact, it makes a lot of sense when I think about it.
However it was totally unexpected and so I thought I'd mention it
to perhaps help some other hapless soul from falling into the same
pit.

NHA
-- 
PAPER:  Norman Azadian; Ascom AG; Belpstrasse 23; 3000 Berne 14; Switzerland
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