[fpc-pascal] Why do string indices start at 1, but array indices start at 0?

[Roberto P.]

2011/10/21 Tomas Hajny <XHajT03 at hajny.biz>

> On 20 Oct 11, at 17:43, Andrew Pennebaker wrote:
>
> > It's inconsistent and ripe for bugs.
>
> Array indices may start at any ordinal value (including e.g.
> characters, values of enumerated types, etc.), not just 0. Only
> dynamic arrays always start at 0 because that is how they have been
> "imported" from other languages.
>
> Tomas
>
>
As said by Thomas, I think we will have to get along with string[1].
However, since I stumbled upon the string[0] mistake more than once, I take
the chance to suggest a way to reduce the likelihood of it.

During compilation, by statically checking the indices used to access the
string, the compiler could fire a warning (or error?) if a  string[0] is
found.
I think that most of the times the string[0] happens inside a for loop or
similar, so a good percentage of these mistakes can be caught.

R#


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