Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: zeroth. was Re: Please welcome . . .

From:Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
Date:Monday, December 15, 2003, 19:12
> > As a physicist, I can tell you that the term > > "zeroth" comes originally from > > the field of thermodynamics.
No, I don't think that was the first use of "zeroth". It has been independently "coined" - perhaps tongue-in-cheekily - many times historically to mean "the thing before the first". On Mon, Dec 15, 2003 at 09:22:56AM -0800, Gary Shannon wrote:
> As a softare engineer I can tell you that the term > zeroth comes originally from the fact that computer > memory is sequentially numbered starting with location > zero, and that tables and arrays normally being with > the zeroth entry. All computer geeks count starting > at zero, not one.
More precisely, when numbering things in computer languages the number is generally equated with the offset from the beginning. The first element of an array is naturally element 0 because it is 0 places away from the beginning, etc. Many high-level programming languages let you use a more natural 1-based counting system for array indices and translate it for you as part of the compilation process. However, most modern practical programming is done in a language derived from or heavily influenced by C, which uses 0-based array indices. But I never refer to element a[0] as the zeroth element. It is element *number* 0, but it is the *first* element. -Mark

Reply

Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...>