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

> > 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

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