The perpetual calendar
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From: CDB on 25 Feb 2010 13:34 jmfbahciv wrote: > Peter T. Daniels wrote: > [industrial leave] > >> What's significant about Mr >> (formerly St) Valentine? > > Oh, are you ever in trouble ;-) > According to Google, his handle hasn't been attached to a posting since 2006; so maybe it's Saint Valentine again. Hope not. Would no more RJ mean no more RF, YJ, or CJ either?
From: R H Draney on 25 Feb 2010 13:36 Adam Funk filted: > >On 2010-02-24, Bob Myers wrote: > >> Andrew Usher wrote: > >>> Well, I'm astounded. Indexing from 0 is so obviously the Right Way >>> that I can't imagine why anyone would do it the other way. >> >> Oh, absolutely. Why, I see people in the stores every day, >> counting out their money or the number of items they're >> going to purchase, and saying to themselves "Zero, one, two..." > >The initialized state of my shopping basket contains 0 items. Each >item I put in increments it. If I initialized at 1, my shopping would >crash with a 1-off error on unpacking. And if you crash a shopping cart, the store will ban you from coming there again in the future....r -- "Oy! A cat made of lead cannot fly." - Mark Brader declaims a basic scientific principle
From: Peter Moylan on 25 Feb 2010 17:39 Tak To wrote: > ----------------------------------------------------------------+----- > Tak To takto(a)alum.mit.eduxx > --------------------------------------------------------------------^^ > [taode takto ~{LU5B~}] NB: trim the xx to get my real email addr Perhaps you're unaware that the xx has already been trimmed in the "From:" field of your postings. Address harvesters are much more likely to get information from the headers than from the body of the message. -- Peter Moylan, Newcastle, NSW, Australia. http://www.pmoylan.org For an e-mail address, see my web page.
From: Peter Moylan on 25 Feb 2010 18:00 Adam Funk wrote: > On 2010-02-24, Bob Myers wrote: > >> Andrew Usher wrote: > >>> Well, I'm astounded. Indexing from 0 is so obviously the Right Way >>> that I can't imagine why anyone would do it the other way. >> Oh, absolutely. Why, I see people in the stores every day, >> counting out their money or the number of items they're >> going to purchase, and saying to themselves "Zero, one, two..." > > The initialized state of my shopping basket contains 0 items. Each > item I put in increments it. If I initialized at 1, my shopping would > crash with a 1-off error on unpacking. If your shopping basket had been designed by a C programmer, its initial state would be the state just before the zeroth item was inserted. That suggests that initially the basket contains -1 items. -- Peter Moylan, Newcastle, NSW, Australia. http://www.pmoylan.org For an e-mail address, see my web page.
From: Mensanator on 25 Feb 2010 18:25
On Feb 25, 5:00 pm, Peter Moylan <gro.nalyomp(a)retep> wrote: > Adam Funk wrote: > > On 2010-02-24, Bob Myers wrote: > > >> Andrew Usher wrote: > > >>> Well, I'm astounded. Indexing from 0 is so obviously the Right Way > >>> that I can't imagine why anyone would do it the other way. > >> Oh, absolutely. Why, I see people in the stores every day, > >> counting out their money or the number of items they're > >> going to purchase, and saying to themselves "Zero, one, two..." > > > The initialized state of my shopping basket contains 0 items. Each > > item I put in increments it. If I initialized at 1, my shopping would > > crash with a 1-off error on unpacking. > > If your shopping basket had been designed by a C programmer, its initial > state would be the state just before the zeroth item was inserted. That > suggests that initially the basket contains -1 items. This is still wrong. As a database programmer, the initial state of my shopping basket is Null. Only after I make a decision about whether to buy Mallomars does the state (with respect to Mallomars) change to 0 or 1. The initial state is never -1. Don't be confused by the practical consideration of not being able to distinguish between Null and 0. In databases, there is no ambiguity at all, since anything added to a Null results in Null, anything compared to a Null is false. The same does NOT hold for values of 0. 99 bottles of beer on the wall, 99 bottles of beer! If Null bottles should happen to fall, Null bottles of beer on the wall! > > -- > Peter Moylan, Newcastle, NSW, Australia. http://www.pmoylan.org > For an e-mail address, see my web page. |